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

Aidan Thorne / Jason Ball Duo

Poems of a Space

Intimate, evocative and beautifully crafted, with the use of electronic effects, or ‘sound design’, carefully and skilfully stitched into these delicately woven guitar and bass conversations.

Swing From Paris

Under Paris Skies

Ursula Harrison and Sylvie Noble Duo

New Eve

Leverton Fox

Eternal Gong Bath of the Sunbed Mind

Tommaso Starace Organ Trio

Live at The Beaver Inn

Pat Metheny

Side Eye III +

Hilary Geddes Quartet

Redleaf

Jazz Mann Recommended Listening

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

Ultimately the triumph is Garland's, the instigator of the project and its principal composer, and also a true virtuoso of that rarest of musical beasts, the mezzo-soprano saxophone.

Alyn Shipton’s New Orleans Friends

The Oxford Concert

It’s rare to hear trad jazz played as brilliantly as this and I genuinely enjoyed listening to this album.

Five-Way Split

Modus Operandi

An impressive second outing from Five Way Split. Although very much rooted in the hard bop tradition the original writing is intelligent and also surprisingly subtle in terms of colour and texture.

Live Jazz Reviews

Fiona Ross Quartet

Fiona Ross Quartet, Black Mountain Jazz, Melville Centre for the Arts, Abergavenny, 28/06/2026.

Alex Hitchcock Quartet

Alex Hitchcock Quartet, Music Spoken Here, The Marr’s Bar, Worcester, 25/06/2026.

John Horler Trio

John Horler Trio - ‘Celebrating Bill Evans’, Pizza Express Jazz Club, Soho, London, 14/06/2026.

Arild Andersen / Daniel Sommer / Rob Luft

Arild Andersen / Daniel Sommer / Rob Luft, St John’s College Auditorium, Oxford, 13/06/2026.

Ibrahim Maalouf

Ibrahim Maalouf and The Trumpets of Michel-Ange The Roundhouse, London, 12/06/2026.

Eddie Gripper

Eddie Gripper Trio, Cheltenham Jazz Club, Victory Club Ballroom, Cheltenham, Glos. 15/06/2026.

Jazz Mann Features

Brecon Jazz Club presents Music Network Tân Cerdd, The Muse Arts Centre, Brecon, 09/06/2026.

Ian Mann enjoys this latest collaboration between Brecon Jazz Club and a collective of singers and musicians associated with the Cardiff based Tân Cerdd Community Interest Company.

Mid Wales Rhythm & Blues Club, ‘12th Birthday Bash’, The Muse, Brecon, 16/05/2026.

Mid Wales Rhythm & Blues Club celebrates its 12th anniversary with five different performances from Paul Keddle & Friends, Elsie Franklin, Jo & Tim Carley, Terraplane Blues Duo and the Jon Amor Trio

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