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

Niklas Lukassen

Still Waters

An excellent leadership debut from Lukassen. His writing is intelligent and multi-faceted and embraces a broad variety of styles and dynamics. The standard of the playing and singing is excellent.

Tim Garland and Geoffrey Keezer

Mezzo

Alyn Shipton’s New Orleans Friends

The Oxford Concert

Five-Way Split

Modus Operandi

Shai Maestro

The Guesthouse

Taupe

waxing / waning

Jazz Sabbath

Jazz Sabbath Live

Jazz Mann Recommended Listening

Aleph Aguiar

Sugar on my Blackbeans

The quality of the playing and writing on this album really is exceptional, and this, allied to the energy and vibrancy of the performances raises the album above the level of the mundane.

Billy Marrows Band

Dancing On Bentwood Chairs

Marrows impresses as a guitarist and even more so as a writer. His compositions are intelligent and imaginative and embrace a wide variety of influences, musical and otherwise.

Julie Campiche

Unspoken

Her most personal, but also most political, recording to date “Unspoken” represents a powerful and thought provoking statement from Campiche.

Harry Christelis

Preserving Fictions

Another impressive statement from Christelis, the composer and principal architect of this intriguing, intelligent, immersive and often beautiful music.

Live Jazz Reviews

BMJ Collective with Sean Hargreaves

BMJ Collective with Sean Hargreaves, Black Mountain Jazz, Melville Centre For The Arts, Abergavenny, 12/04/2026.

Let Spin

Let Spin, Shrewsbury Jazz Network, The Hive Music & Media Centre, Shrewsbury, 11/04/2026.

Philip Clouts Quartet

Philip Clouts Quartet, Music Spoken Here, The Marr’s Bar, Worcester, 09/04/2026.

Dom Franks’ StrayHorn Quintet

Dom Franks’ Strayhorn Quintet, Corn Exchange Jazz Club, The Corn Exchange, Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, 09/04/2026.

Small Blue

Small Blue, Jazz at Progress, Progress Theatre, Reading, Berkshire, 27/03/2026.

Brass Band Bychan

Brass Band Bychan, Black Mountain Jazz, Melville Centre for the Arts, Abergavenny, 29/03/2026.

Jazz Mann Features

Music Spoken Here, Worcester celebrates fourth birthday.

Instigated by Dave Fuller in 2022 Music Spoken Here presents contemporary jazz, fusion, funk and soul on a fortnightly basis at The Marr's Bar, Worcester.

Jazz a Juan 2026 - A Preview.

Colin May looks ahead to the 65th edition of the French jazz festival Jazz a Juan, which will take place in July 2026, and interviews two of its organisers, Reno di Matteo and Maryline Bailly.

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