The Californian label Stones Throw has long specialised in inseparably folding together the most profound and most wilfully foolish Black American music. And that is truer than ever on these 17 tracks from Virginian singer / songwriter / producer / multi-instrumentalist DJ Harrison.
The archetypal fascinating male in Jane Campion’s films – whether his allure for a woman owes to his earthy virility or emotional sensitivity, his animal appeal or his soul – has a malign other.
It seemed impossible and yet, the other evening, while idly flicking through emails, I learned the unimaginable: Stephen Sondheim, age 91, had passed away. And very quickly by all accounts, given that he was reported to have enjoyed a Thanksgiving meal with friends just the previous day.
Saxophonist Kenny G knows exactly what buttons he needs to press to upset the jazz faithful. He is quoted as having said of his new album New Standards (Concord): “The jazz community is gonna hate it. And that doesn’t concern me.”
Jason Isbell is a bigger noise on the other side of the Atlantic than he is in the UK but his last three albums have, nonetheless, bothered the middle-regions of the British album charts. He’s built a critically lauded career with his band The 400 Unit since leaving Drive-By Truckers a decade-and-a-half ago, merging country with rock and various southern US styles.
Miles Davis stole Charles Lloyd’s band, and much else.
“Drug companies are supposed to be honest,” says a lady from the Department of Justice, explaining why the US Food and Drug Administration had been treating the pharmaceutical industry with a light, indeed barely detectable, regulatory touch.
Where do you draw – how do you draw? – a credible line between jazz and “classical” music in 20th-century America? With the reliably boundary-busting Britten Sinfonia, trumpeter Alison Balsom mixed and matched works from different formal lineages in her packed programme at Milton Court, “An American Rhapsody”.
A classic specimen of the “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” school, Bruised is Halle Berry’s directorial debut.
The independent filmmaker Alexandre Rockwell has flown under the radar since he made his name with the Cassavetes-vibed 1992 New York comedy In the Soup. He recently explained that his career was sabotaged by Harvey Weinstein, who was jealous, Rockwell suspects, of his close friendship with Quentin Tarantino. The intervening years haven’t been fallow, but Rockwell’s 10th feature, the lyrical childhood mini-odyssey Sweet Thing (2020), represents a major comeback.