Lively Up! 2013 pays tribute to Dr Martin Luther King Jr
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Catch A Fire – back by popular demand…now even bigger!
4-star REVIEW for CATCH A FIRE at Usher Hall
Wow! Another 4-star review for Jazz Jamaica All Stars, Urban Soul Orchestra and Brinsley Forde, this time from Rob Adams writing for the Herald about the grand finale to the Catch A Fire tour and closing night of the Lively Up! Festival. And what a night it was!
Warm and very special thanks go to the Tinderbox Orchestra for setting the fuse for the final gig of our first Catch A Fire tour (we hope to do more!), and helping to make the closing night of the Lively Up! Festival utterly electric. You guys didn’t get a mention in the Herald review, but we were all seriously impressed with your performance and look forward to working with you under the aegis of Tomorrow’s Warriors. Soon come…!
We had a ball at Usher Hall. Big thanks to Karl Chapman for keeping faith with our ability to deliver the most amazing show. With over 1,000 pre-sales, we knew we were going to have a fantastic audience for our last night and what better place to have our party than in Edinburgh. It was a blast and we’re all still buzzing from it. Brilliant!
We’ll post up the video from Edinburgh shortly, including the train journey home when we were joined by some Scottish footie fans on their way to Newcastle who refused to let Brinsley continue his journey without a song! One Love – it was a hoot! Watch this space…
Meantime, here is the 4-star review (thanks Rob!):
“Tweet if you’re having fun!” was the instruction from the stage and the information sheet handed out on arrival. It took a song or four before visible signs of enjoyment broke out in the audience, which wasn’t due, surely, to bassist and artistic director Gary Crosby’s mock-stern “don’t dance, this is serious music” directive being taken literally. But once one lone dancer had led the way, there was as much of a party going on in the stalls as there was on the stage. READ ON…
PREVIEW: Nu Civilisation Orchestra – Southbank Centre, London – 17 November
So today we heard that the review of our Catch A Fire show was the ‘MOST READ’ on the London Jazz Blog! Nice one people!
And now we have an excellent preview by Jon Turney of the forthcoming performance on 17 November of the Nu Civilisation Orchestra‘s outstanding concert, Parallel: A Tribute To Joe Harriott – Where Music Meets Art at the Purcell Room, SouthbankCentre, London – home of Tomorrow’s Warriors and the Nu Civilisation Orchestra. We’ll also be displaying the art of the wonderful artist, Emma Godebska as part of the show.
Turney describes this concert as ‘well worth the effort’ and ‘exactly the kind of thing jazz festivals are about’. See excerpts from the concert in Bristol here.
Zeitgeist moves in mysterious ways. Science sees more simultaneous discoveries than can be easily explained. Music, too, finds players striving for similar goals even though they haven’t discussed them.
The titles of the coruscating Jamaican alto saxophonist Joe Harriott’s key recordings, Free Form (1960) and Abstract (1962) declared his determination to get beyond be-bop to something freer from ready-made structure. Read on…
VIDEO: CATCH A FIRE – What the Leeds audience thought of it
We said the lovely people of Leeds had a fantastic time at Catch A Fire at the Town Hall last week. Don’t just take our word for it…watch this! And this response has been replicated at every venue the Lively Up! Festival has been to! AWESOME! Congratulations to all of our wonderful Festival artists!
CATCH A FIRE – The fire’s still burning bright at Leeds Town Hall
What a brilliant gig! The band is still buzzin’ and vibin’ off the magical feeling created by last week’s London show, and the people of Leeds turned out in their hundreds to come see what all the fuss is about. This show is just getting stronger and stronger…nobody wants it to end! And it’s such great fun with these guys and girls. They are an amazing bunch of musicians and a real delight to work with.
Anyway, thought we’d try out a panoramic shot with the new office camera. Not bad for a first attempt, but just wanted to give you a sense of the ‘room’ we played in – an absolutely stunning Victorian building with baroque and classical architecture. Just beautiful.
As for the audience in Leeds, well, as with all the other cities, they were WILD for Catch A Fire! Nobody wants this tour to end!
4-stars FT Review: CATCH A FIRE – A grand-scale tribute to the 1973 landmark recording
Oh wow! What a fantastic review of the Catch A Fire show at QEH by the lovely Mike Hobart for the Financial Times. You know, the show sold out a full two weeks ahead of time, yet people were still queuing up outside the venue trying to get their hands on tickets for the show on the night. Incredible! But a real testimony to just how great this show is. Anyway, check out what the FT had to say about it:
The 1973 album Catch a Fire established Bob Marley and the Wailers internationally and launched reggae on to the world stage. This gig, featuring a 31-piece orchestra and an 80-voice choir, was a grand-scale tribute to this landmark recording, and, as part of the touring Lively Up! Festival, at the same time marked the 50th anniversary of Jamaican independence. Read on…
Jazzwise Review: JAZZ JAMAICA ALL STARS evoke the true spirit of Marley
Ooh, another excellent review, this time from Black Music specialist, Kevin Le Gendre writing here for Jazzwise Magazine. Those of you who attended the Catch A Fire talk at the British Music Experience at the very start of the Lively Up! Festival will remember Kevin chaired an eminent panel of Tony Platt, Gary Crosby and Brinsley Forde talking about the making of Catch A Fire and its global impact.
Like everyone else who went to the London Catch A Fire live show, he had a fantastic time!
In 1973, when Bob Marley & The Wailers cut Catch A Fire, a landmark album not just in reggae but modern popular music, Jamaica as a sovereign state was just over a decade old. No greater celebration of the country’s 50th anniversary of independence could be conceived than in the form of Jazz Jamaica All Stars’ take on that chef d’oeuvre, because, to a large extent, the ‘small island’ has grown up with that original rebel music, so proud and defiant in tone, as an unofficial soundtrack. The re-imagining is about scale. Read on…
Another CATCH A FIRE review from London Jazz/Rob Edgar
Here you go! Another review of the London Catch A Fire show.
1962 saw Jamaica confirm its status as an independent country. Last night saw the London leg of the Lively Up! Festival tour at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, one of 7 dates around the UK celebrating this with a reworking of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ seminal debut Catch a Fire, plus other well-known tunes.
The sold out concert featured the Jazz Jamaica All Stars, The Urban Soul Orchestra under the baton and watchful eye of Kevin Robinson, and Voicelab. Read more…
FROM ALPHA TO THE QEH: review of CATCH A FIRE by Paul Bradshaw
A fab review by the great Paul Bradshaw (Straight No Chaser) on his blog Ancient To Future – thanks Paul!
The Lively Up tour arrived in London town last night and the Queen Elizabeth Hall was rammed to capacity. There was genuine sense of anticipation in the air and as one scanned the stage which was set up to accommodate not just a full force – 30 strong – Jazz Jamaica but also the strings of the Urban Soul Orchestra one wondered how this project was going to drop…Read on
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