The Jazz Mann | Jazz music reviews and news from the Jazz Mann Ian Mann

Winner of the Parliamentary Jazz Award for Best Media, 2019

Jazz Album Reviews

Uneven Eleven

Live in Brighton

It may have been recorded more than a decade ago but it’s great to have this music out there and available. It still sounds fresh and exciting and just bristles with energy and invention.

Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra

20 / 20

Sondre Moshagen Lightning Trio

Lightning

Chris Hodgkins & Lenore Raphael

Pennies From Heaven

Chicuelo & Marco Mezquida

Del alma

Gareth Lockrane Big Band

Box of Tricks

DOX

Drowned Circuits

Jazz Mann Recommended Listening

Steve Lodder

2 Sorts Of 3

It’s a tribute to Lodder that “2 Sorts Of 3” with its mix of electric and acoustic sounds coheres so effectively as an album. This is largely due to the intelligence and quality of his writing.

Tim Richards Trio

Four Aces

Tim Richards is one of the great unsung heroes of British jazz and this is an unpretentious and highly enjoyable album that deserves to be widely heard.

Dave Redmond

All in Motion

Confirms Redmond’s status as one of Ireland’s premier bass players while also enhancing his reputation as a composer and bandleader.

Will Barnes Quartet

Outside The Light

The quartet’s most adventurous recording to date. Barnes’ writing is increasingly individual and distinctive, displaying a growing maturity and a genuine melodic and narrative awareness.

Live Jazz Reviews

Eddie Parker’s Airborn

Eddie Parker’s Airborn, Music Spoken Here, The Marr’s Bar, Worcester, 11/12/2025.

Janette Mason

Janette Mason ReWired Trio, Jazz at Progress, Progress Theatre, Reading, Berkshire, 05/12/2025.

M. Haiux / Merope

M. Haiux / Merope, Sy ; Gigs, Unitarian Church, Shrewsbury, 06/12/2025.

Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama Jazz Ensemble

RWCMD Big Band - ‘A tribute to Quincy Jones’, Black Mountain Jazz, Melville Centre, Abergavenny, 30/11/2025.

Allexa Nava

Allexa Nava Quartet, Music Spoken Here, The Marr’s Bar, Worcester, 27/11/2025.

Ayra

Ayra, Pizza Express Live, Holborn, London, 20/11/2025 (Part of EFG London Jazz Festival).

Jazz Mann Features

BMJazz Katz, “Christmas in Sight”, Black Mountain Jazz, Melville Centre, Abergavenny, 07/12/2025.

A Yuletide celebration championing the work of Back Mountain Jazz's youth jazz ensemble the BMJazz Katz and their tutors, the BMJ Collective.

EFG London Jazz Festival 2025 - Day Ten, Sunday 23/11/2025.

Ian Mann on the final day of the Festival and performances by the Royal Academy Jazz Orchestra, Billy Marrows / Max Kahn Duo, Terje Isungset's Ice Quartet and Seb Rochford's Finding Ways.

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