After years hidden away, Oldham’s memorial to six local volunteers who died fighting fascism in the Spanish civil war has been restored to public view, marking both a victory for campaigners and a renewed tribute to the town’s proud International Brigade heritage, says ROB HARGREAVES
John McLaughlin and the 4th Dimension
Live at Ronnie Scott’s
(Mediastar2)
JOHN McLAUGHLIN’S Gaza City, from his March 2017 album Live at Ronnie Scott’s is one of those very few and precious recorded jazz performances that resonate with the living reality of epochal moments of people’s struggles.
It is comparable to John Coltrane’s Alabama, the tribute to the four girls murdered by racists’ dynamite in the basement of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963 in the midst of the civil rights campaign, or Hugh Masekela’s Sharpeville, exposing the deathly violence of South African apartheid, or Freddie Hubbard’s 1971 threnody Sing Me A Song of Songmy, an album dedicated to the families slaughtered by rampaging US troops in a Vietnamese village.
As part of the 2025 London Jazz Festival Rich Mix offered intriguing sessions titled 'Persian Jazz,' CHRIS SEARLE was there
Chris Searle speaks to saxophonist XHOSA COLE and US tap-dancer LIBERTY STYLES
STEVE JOHNSON, CHRIS SEARLE and TONY BURKE review new releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ



