The leaves began to fade
Like promises we made
How could a love that seemed so right go wrong?
– Sammy Cahn from ‘The Things We Did Last Summer’
“I’ll remember all winter long”: Newcomer Alice Milburn (25) is an English jazz singer from Portsmouth, doyenne of the Vaults regular jazz night in Southsea. Much more than a demo or statement of intent First Expressions was recorded in the Hampshire summer at a Gosport studio.
If you like Stacey Kent and Naama you will be in your element dipping into these things she did last summer. Very girl next door it’s the show song type Broadway and bebop “classic” approach to the genre driving things along. So it’s retro and very much a period piece. Milburn has a persuasive voice. She’s an old soul. It’s an enjoyably mercifully uncheesy profile raising start to getting to know her sound.
Covers include the 1930s James F. Hanley Thumbs Up song that Renée Zellweger performed on the soundtrack for brilliant 2019 Judy Garland biopic Judy, ‘Zing Went the Strings of My Heart.’
First Expressions is not dark as night or torch song fodder which I prefer. But nevertheless I liked her ingénue take on the Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn 1940s classic that Frank Sinatra interpreted ‘The Things We Did Last Summer’ that has a vibrant bass contribution from bassist George Balmont. There’s a throw your head back gleefulness to the Milburn vocal too on the singer’s winning treatment of ‘It’s Almost Like Being in Love’ later on the song when the verse is carefully negotiated and the formidable scatting kicks in so when the words return it’s like she has shed a skin and found a new carefree spirit inside.
With the singer are also keyboardist Saul Hughes and drummer Josh Turn plus musical director trombonist Lloyd Pearce who solos on Milburn original ‘Brief Company’. The lyrics despair at the flakiness of a man desirous perhaps of a one night stand. The voice has confidence and personality.
‘Brief Company’ and ‘Zing Went the Strings of My Heart’ are among tracks streaming so far. The full album is out on 24 October. Scat is this steeped in the romance of the songs jazz thoroughbred’s strongest suit.
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Malou Oheix wins the Hancock
French singer Malou Oheix won the Hancock at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris last night. Pictured left with Dee Dee Bridgewater.
Photo: YouTube still
The concert was live streamed (above). John Beasley musically directed the evening. There is a storming section at the end featuring the winner, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Gregory Porter, Gretchen Parlato and more with Herbie Hancock himself at the piano.
Extraordinarily The French Lieutenant’s Woman actor the great Jeremy Irons, pictured: YouTube still, pops up to thank everyone at the end before the starry cast dives into Aaron “Pinetop” Sparks and Milton Sparks’ 1930s classic ‘Everyday I Have The Blues.’ It’s around the 2 hr 51 min mark. “Malou, you paid your dues,” ad libs Dee Dee, putting her stamp on the lyrics tipping her hat metaphorically to the winner.
North of England singer Lucy-Anne Daniels did extremely well to get to the last three as it turned out.
Oheix hails from Nantes and studied classical piano at the Conservatoire de Nantes before embarking on a vocals direction. She is no stranger to doing well at prestigious awards shows having already picked up Second Prize at the Shure Montreux Jazz Voice Competition some years ago. But winning the Hancock is in a completely different league and should help catapult her career to new heights.
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Finn Carter, Finding Home, Whirlwind **** recommended
Finn Carter photo via Whirlwind
New and very notable from Finn Carter in a quartet setting plus guest trumpeter Christos Stylianides (remember Gestalt?) on the more free form ‘Clear Your Mind (If You Can)’. In Carter’s band the young London pianist/organist and composer who favours a very poignant, heartfelt touch which isn’t twee in the slightest is joined by tenor saxophonist Kaidi Akinnibi who proves highly effective, double bassist Joe MacLaren – brilliant on ‘Clear Your Mind (If You Can)’ sounding a bit like Jacob Gryn (the Sultan Stevenson bassist) – and drummer Blake Cascoe who has worked with Sampha, Little Simz and PinkPantheress. Carter started to emerge in the Lockdown years around late 2021 and this release shows how much his sound is in full bloom.
Carter and MacLaren were both on the rather lovely Rex Orange County’s alt. country tinged ‘Guitar Song’ which was on the English singer songwriter Alex O’Connor’s album The Alexander Technique which came out a few years ago under O’Connor’s Rex Orange County moniker.
But this new album is jazz and makes no apologies for it nor for its melodicism that’s part of the blend. In this video filmed earlier this year at Nottingham jazz club Peggy’s Skylight, Carter, Akinnibi, MacLaren and Cascoe play Hymn for My Dad tune ‘Swimming Pool Jones.’ The opening chords are like the spirit Billy Taylor tapped on ‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free’. I always feel very grounded when a pianist enters that sort of spiritual domain and finds a new path to navigate it. Home Again abounds with such moments often cloaked in softly tolling cadential microcosm.
Hymn For My Dad itself which is also extremely good was recorded at a studio in Portugal and released in 2024. Akinnibi and MacLaren were on that too. But for this new one the pianist has changed his drummer.
Finding Home is very touching, powerfully mournful and rather poignant and feels authentic. Highly recommendable, I’d pick out ‘Rejoicing You’ where the sax comes into its own most and there is strong bass soloing. Carter’s opening to ‘Short Stories’ is utterly beautiful – it has a twirling music box quality to it as if pins are plucking out hidden, encrypted, emotion – and I find myself playing that over and over again, the theme carefully delineated by Akinnibi whose work I also liked doing Afro jazz fusion in very catchy fashion with Blue Lab Beats. Tunes are all Carter’s. Deserves maximum exposure, respect, plaudits and recognition.
- Hear Finn Carter at the Vortex, Dalston this coming Tuesday evening. Finding Home is in the marlbank top new UK jazz tally for 2026 – read the full list
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Sarah Heneghan, Tiny Sacred Gaps ***
Haunting sounds from Sheffield drummer Sarah Heneghan
From the Rhondda Valleys – clearly somewhere close to her heart as there’s a tune here called ‘The Rhondda Line’ – Sarah Heneghan wasn’t initially a drummer only taking to the instrument in her twenties. She is folk and electronic music influenced and that shows in places on this fairly interesting release that doesn’t overstate its case but which has a slow burning intensity to it.
Her work has received support from organisations including Manchester Jazz Festival, see some of the fruits of her labours above in the video, Jazz North, Sage Gateshead and Arts Council England, and she was selected for London promoter Serious’ Take Five development programme. Heneghan teaches at the University of Sheffield and contributes to the city’s improvised music scene.
There’s a simplicity to the Tiny Sacred Gaps sound which is shaped around her drumming and electronics and a bit of guitar dubbed in here and there meshed with Ben Gaunt’s piano playing and Charlotte Keeffe’s trumpet mournfulness. The tunes are quite heartfelt and poignant. I reckon she’s more of a writer than a monster player. What’s here is not particularly generic as a sound. What I mean by that is it doesn’t cling to language specific to simply one area. As a jazz listener I get it but I don’t think you have to be one to take something away from what’s here. It does feel a little too under produced though. And I wasn’t so keen on the brittle keys lines on ‘Wings & Locomotion’ but preferred the set up a lot more on ‘Heath’ and the rest of the tracks.
Gaunt reminds me of Chris Hyson of Snowpoet a bit in approach. The Tiny Sacred Gaps keyboardist also played with Heneghan in a project called Beyond Albedo, above. He studied composition at the Royal Northern College of Music.
Charlotte Keeffe is mainly known as a free improviser but in this context is far more conventional than the approach found on a lot of her work and it suits her well coming in from the cold. She made her debut with Right Here, Right Now issued 5 years ago and has collaborated with musicians including Paul Dunmall and Orphy Robinson.
– Heneghan, Keeffe and Gaunt play music from Tiny Sacred Gaps in Pizza Express Live, Soho in London on Saturday at lunchtime. Further dates include Matt and Phred’s, Manchester on 4 November
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Sharp Little Bones, Step Up! Get Down! Full Beam Music ***
A whole lot less frenetic than the title suggests this is a far more thoughtful and introspective version of Nottingham band Sharp Little Bones than hitherto.
Once again playing the tunes of the band’s bass guitarist Simon Paterson and featuring the sax of Tony Kofi as a guest there’s a 1970s flavour and a gravitation towards jazz-rock fusion although the style flits about a bit.
“It’s not like it’s a procession of formulaic Buggins turn soloing”: click, above for a review of earlier album Volumes I and 2 reviewed in 2023
Paul Deats on Rhodes piano and Moog synthesiser is fairly restrained – this isn’t really a relentless funky sound at all and doesn’t rely overly on boisterous riffs or metrical pyrotechnics.
Far more interesting is what Kofi does on ‘Portman Pie’ and he mainly steals the show. I feel overall the band sounds a bit too restrained. But it is credible stuff and the tunes are better than what I remember of their earlier album. ‘Woody’ Wood on drums reminds me of Get the Blessing’s Clive Deamer a bit in places as he has the same rugged style. The album was recorded at the University of Nottingham Recording Studio in July last year.
Check the band and Kofi playing ‘Sweet Bitter Crush’ at Peggy’s Skylight live in Nottingham last year. Dates coming up include Peggy’s Skylight (17 October) and The Cockpit, London (26 Oct).
The balladic side of the album particularly ‘Sweet Bitter Crush’ works best of all. For variety it would have been interesting to have had a classic jazz ballad on the album written by someone else in addition to the originals.
Photos: Martin Makowski
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Rahsaan Barber, Eternal, Jazz Music City Records ***1/2
Rahsaan Barber photo credit: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
This slips down very easily. New from American saxophonist Rahsaan Barber, 46, who hails from Nashville and teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, it’s urgent, authorial, tenor saxophone soaked in hard bop and beyond. But Barber is no beginner and experience shows. So if you are looking for meretricious novelty and flavour of the day ephemerality, sorry, nothing to see here.
The American has been around the block a few times with some half a dozen albums to his name already. Here he is with guitarist Ted Ludwig, pianist Matt Endahl, bassist Kevin Beardsley and drummer Joshua Hunt. Ludwig’s contributions stand out most in the backing sound and are part of why the album works so well in its fabric stitched in underneath the declarative saxophone lead.
Released on Barber’s own Jazz Music City label, what you will discover should you choose to listen is a straightahead and blues inflected modern jazz amalgam. If you are into what Christian McBride does, the shelter of the shade of the cedar tree counts here too as a kind of future proofed signifier stylistically in some of the writing.
Barber is partly a Stanley Turrentine kind of player. That side of his playing is dialled down a bit but it’s still there on some of the more characterful passages on this new record. Check RB out on earlier Turrentine homage the rollicking ‘Song for Stanley T’ going back more than 20 years to his own album, TrioSoul.
I’d choose ‘Sanctuary at Seaside’ and the feelgood ‘Cabbage’ as the standout tracks of this latest album just released – the latter reprised at the end as if there wasn’t quite enough material to fill the album out.
The whole thing is easy to digest on a first listen without being at all overly toothsome and I’ll go back to it over the weekend for repeat play – it’s people pleasing jazz without making too many compromises.
Barber, among his siblings, has a twin brother, trombonist Roland Barber and both musicians were named after saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk (1935-77). Dr Barber studied at Indiana University under the ex-George Russell Stratusphunk trombonist David Baker (1931-2016), before completing a master’s degree at the Manhattan School of Music and later completing a doctorate in classical saxophone at the University of Memphis. Sadly Barber and his wife, classical saxophonist Heidi Radtke, suffered the unexpected loss of a pregnancy that was to be their first child, a daughter. Through loss Eternal finds something deep inside that speaks to the world.
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Gary Crosby Quartet featuring Cherise Adams-Burnett + Maddy Coombs trio, Blue Note, London ****
I grabbed a chance to make a first visit to the Blue Note on St Martin’s Lane last night. The club opened in September. It’s in a capacious basement, has very good sightlines, a fairly wide stage and clear sound.
This Tomorrow’s Warriors curated evening divided into two houses (I attended the first of these) opened with a short set led by saxophonist and flautist Maddy Coombs. ‘Equinox’ was the first number, a strongly pentatonic riff heavy classic John Coltrane piece, and it was Trane’s influence that benevolently provided a halo effect for the set and indeed the whole evening.
Coombs has a persuasive tone and she led a piano-less trio featuring strong double bass playing from Genevieve Namazzi and the vibrant sound of drummer Zoe Pascal. Coombs was let down a tiny bit by a squeaky reed but excelled nevertheless on Trane’s ‘Central Park West’ and throughout. Later what might have been created by the use of dry ice that implied a rising smoke effect behind the players could be spotted on the well lit stage. Diffident and quiet at the microphone when speaking to the audience she far more confidently went on to introduce a tune of hers so far untitled taking out her flute and playing it and reverting back to sax on the tune after a chorus or two.
But it was the trio’s lit up inside take on Tadd Dameron’s ‘On a Misty Night’ that proved the pick of the brief set.
The main act of the first house was led by Gary Crosby, the influential bassist who down the years has helped steer Tomorrow’s Warriors into the powerhouse incubator of new talent it remains today – and what a strong band he brought with him. The quartet was enhanced by guest singer Cherise Adams-Burnett last heard by this blog during A Great Day in London at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. The singer also appeared on the Downtown Abbey film soundtrack.
Bearing Betty Carter in mind especially when she negotiated tricky vocalese passages after the main lyrics were stated, Cherise on several occasions showed her strong technical command and interpretative ability. The songs selected included Gigi Gryce’s ‘Social Call,’ Cole Porter’s ‘Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye’ and ‘Night and Day’ the last of which went down best with the audience going by the noise the well filled room generated. The place is quite a big club – probably a bit larger than the size of Ronnie Scott’s: it certainly feels wider – and is more spacious.
As for the band I liked the way they did Oliver Nelson and Gail Fisher’s ‘Stolen Moments’ and Andrew McCormack – who is also bassist Kyle “son of Clint” Eastwood’s long time pianist – was superb especially when he leant into quartal harmony more and “went fourth” hammering the club’s Yamaha to effect and allying with drummer Rod Youngs, an American who has lived in England for years and who used to be in Gil Scott-Heron’s Amnesia Express.
Clad in double denim Cherise was affable during her audience chats – she told us she is doing a masters in business on the side – goes the extra mile in using facial and hand gestures to interpret the words of the songs she sings so you get a clear take on how she understands the words and brings them to life. The band take and vocal imagination shown in the treatment of ‘My Favorite Things’ – again a nod to Coltrane who famously interpreted the Rodgers and Hammerstein Sound of Music number on his 1961 album of the same name – was rousing and the best thing of all.
So an ideal introduction to the club – I hope I’m back again before too long – and a pleasure as ever to hear Gary Crosby in optimum conditions. An earlier gig he participated in, over at Cadogan Hall in the summer led by “marvellous” Marvin Muoneké and Mark Lockheart, is my gig of the year so far. Last night’s show is also up there among the best live jazz I have witnessed in 2026.
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Michael Kanan, Horacio Fumero and Guillem Arnedo, The Sweetest Sounds, Fresh Sound ***
Bringing together the US pianist Michael Kanan, the veteran Argentinian double bassist Horacio Fumero and the Catalan drummer Guillem Arnedo, The Sweetest Sounds was recorded in La Garriga near Barcelona.
Middle of the road, swinging and pretty joyful at that, particularly if the idiom is your natural listening terrain, Kanan’s touch is measured and poised.
Kanan above accompanying Jimmy Scott in Tokyo in 2000 on ‘I Cried for You’
His CV includes earning his dues with Jimmy Scott and as the long-term musical director for Jane Monheit.
Kanan accompanies the great jazz and show singer Jane Monheit in the video above at a studio in Seattle with the bassist Neal Miner and Jane’s husband drummer Rick Montalbano.
“Iscoca” Fumero toured with sax legend Gato Barbieri (1932-2016) in the 1970s before spending nearly two decades with Spain’s legendary pianist Tete Montoliu. He played charango on Latino America in the 1970s.
Arnedo keeps stately time and contributes ‘Best Buddy’ a tune you will also find on the Bartha-Arnedo Quartet Hunnia label 2023 album It’s About Time (above) which on that similarly swinging version was arranged with a trumpet part to it on top.
If the moon turns green
Bernie Hanighen
And rivers began to flow upstream
This is all a crazy dream: I wouldn’t be surprised
Anything can happen
If you can fall in love with me
There’s a moody, acoustic reimagining of Yip Harburg’s ‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?’ and also here are Tommy Dorsey’s classic ‘I’ll Never Smile Again’ and Bernie Hanighen and Paul Cates’ 1930s song ‘If the Moon Turns Green’ that Billie Holiday, Carmen McRae and Anita O’Day all delivered versions of.
The album moves gracefully from the breezy swing of Clara Edwards’ 1930 song ‘With the Wind and the Rain in Your Hair’ to the vulnerability of Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Lonely Town’. Alan Broadbent did a buoyant version of the ‘Wind and Rain’ song in recent years and to some extent Kanan compares quite well stylistically with Broadbent’s take on the tune although it’s not quite as bright and engaged as his in this reading.
But the title track, Richard Rodgers’ ‘The Sweetest Sounds’, certainly rewards the task of seeking out the record. Performed by Diahann Carroll & Richard Kiley in the early 1960s, recent treatments within the last 15 years have included pianist Connie Han’s on her album The Richard Rodgers Songbook back in 2015. Han’s approach is far more demonstrative than Kanan’s. You don’t come to this album for brash overstatement at all. And ain’t that a tonic, dear reader. The originals get overshadowed a bit – certainly you arrive at the album which is something of a period piece for the great choice of standards and the thoughtful approach most of all.
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Jo Harrop, Love Now Pay Later, Lateralize ***1/2
There’s a gentleness to the album that rotates around two axes, the first is the Black Acid Soul deep soul connection brought to the table by producer the Lady Blackbird collaborator guitarist Chris Seefried (Lady B even does backing vocals on standout original the Seefried/Harrop co-write ‘Smoke Inside a Jar’). Her keyboardist Deron Johnson – who was on Miles Davis’ final album Doo-Bop also pops up among the album personnel.
The other axis is the contribution of Jo regulars like pianist Paul Edis and Jamie McCredie that is a manifestion of what’s more like the everyday gigging sound as Harrop frequently plays with both – an earlier album with Edis When Winter Turns to Spring and on which guitarist McCredie also figures is one of her best and won a Parliamentary Jazz Award three years ago.
The covers are the fascinating aspect of this latest album. For instance the version of Larry Banks’ ‘I’m Not The One’ is less dramatic and intense. Banks’ first wife Toni aka Bessie Banks Larry produced and co-wrote for on the to die for 1964 song ‘Go Now’ later covered by the Moody Blues in their smash hit version. I love that song. I wish Jo had included it on this album. Sigh.
But more to her approach and even better perhaps Jo also tackles Labi Siffre Crying Laughing Loving Lying number ‘My Song’ and retains the positivity that Labi Siffre endowed it with.
She can do ache and heart break – make no mistake. But the dressing isn’t doomy more wistfully bittersweet. Title track ‘Love Now, Pay Later’ is an obscure northern soul collectable Velma Perkins song that Dunleith, Mississippi born Chicago raised Garland Green sang in the late 1960s on his album Jealous Kind of Fella. Green died in February this year aged 83.
Again the Jo method is to slow things down, let the melody linger and finesse the lines. The better point of comparison is not Green’s take more the Clydie King version which also connects a bit with a Dusty Springfield sensibility.
One of those artists who are great live and on record, mercifully I have managed to hear Jo a few times down the years. First of all at the Spice of Life in Soho accompanied by Alex Webb and again copacetically with Webb at the Hampstead Jazz Club singing songs from The Tony Bennett and Bill Evans Album later broadcast on Jazz FM and also at a bigger scale gig in Cadogan Hall as part of a programme that included an appearance by queen of lovers rock Carroll Thompson.
More recently she was on fine form last year when the London based animal loving fortysomething who hails from Chester-Le-Street in the north east of England made her Northern Ireland debut playing a duo gig with Paul Edis also from Chester-Le-Street in a beautifully bucolic sanctuary. Deep in the heart of Down down there, Jesus, Mary and Joseph – the wee donkey even gets a look-in.
As a jazz singer who is pretty soulful as a natural correlation that’s an easy connection to make as a concept going for a deep soul theme. But I am not sure if it completely works or maybe and this is why I hesitate it is just I have pangs for jazz material. However that is being picky and taking the eye off the sparrow! [Friend: this ain’t a gospel record either – for that… step this way] Probably doing soul will be a revelation to punters who haven’t a clue about her jazz pedigree but may well want to discover it digging this. Certainly the choice of covers is stimulating and I gravitated to these most.
It all proves a marked shift, although I doubt she is going to throw out the baby with the bath water, from the jazz centred approach of Harrop’s earlier records and the way Larry Klein produced her on what is I think still her greatest album The Path of A Tear which like this album was recorded in Los Angeles. Themes of desire, romantic recklessness and its consequences percolate thoughout the album flavoured by Hammond B3, Wurlitzer, piano, bass, drums and backing vocals.
- Jo plays Pizza Express Live, Dean Street, Soho in London tomorrow evening and on Thursday
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Lucy-Anne Daniels is a semi-finalist in the upcoming Herbie Hancock Institute jazz vocals contest11 September 2026
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