Preview: Indigo Jazz Voices @ The Globe, Thursday, February 12

Fancy a pre-Valentine’s foray to hear some jazz and blues? Then extract yourself off the sofa and go along to the Globe to hear some fine singers comprising Paul Close (also on guitar), Jenny Lingham, Miriam McCormick and David Edgar. 

'Round Midnight, Ramblin’ on my Mind, In a Sentimental Mood, You Don’t Know What Love is – may not just be what’s going on with you a couple of nights before Valentine’s, but, among others, are some of the songs you will hear. 

Jazz Time Aycliffe Radio - Sundays 6.30-8.00pm (repeated Tuesdays 8.00-9.30pm).

https://www.ayclifferadio.co.uk/listen.

Playlist 08/02/26 (repeated Tuesday 10/02/26)

Happy 95^th birthday!: Louis Armstrong.

Jazz historian, broadcaster and musician, Alyn Shipton introduces The Oxford Concert: Alyn Shipton's New Orleans Friends and talks about George Lewis and the New Orleans tradition.

Memories: Bill Evans, Barney Kessel, Lonnie Johnson, Chick Webb.

Tony Eales' pick: Paris Jazz Big Band (Pierre Bertrand & Nicolas Folmer).

What’s on in the NE: Noel Dennis.

Requests: Tina May, Charlie Parker. 

Aycliffe Radio is now available on DAB in County Durham & the Darlington Area or via your smart speaker. 

R.I.P. Josie Falbo (1943 - Jan. 1, 2026)

I'm devastated! Yesterday, only one day after reviewing what turned out to be her final album, I was informed that Chicago based singer and legend Josie Falbo had passed away on January 1 after a losing battle with cancer.

The irony is that it was only on Thursday that I first fell in love with her beautiful voice and I looked forward to hearing more. There was a silken timbre to her voice that few singers achieve. Paradoxically, the closest I've heard with similar qualities was Rebecca Kilgore who left us only a week later. However, whereas as Becky had a host of albums to her name, to the best of my knowledge Josie only recorded three. I will be looking out for those.

Josie was 82 but her voice was timeless.

My posthumous apology for not discovering Josie Falbo sooner.

REST IN PEACE. Lance

YouTube clip (12 mins).

You Must Believe in Spring.

Film review: Ornette: Made in America @ Star & Shadow Cinema, Newcastle - Feb. 6

A rare screening of Shirley Clarke's 1985 documentary film Ornette: Made in America. The Star and Shadow Cinema on Warwick Street, Newcastle attracted many of the usual suspects. Filmed over something like thirty years, Clarke's film was both of its time and not so much of its time - the overall look and feel more Woodstock-era than mid-eighties filmmaking.  

Grainy footage, fast cut editing, visually and audially there was little or no respite. Freight trains, cityscapes, street scenes, from Ornette's early years in Fort Worth, Texas to Ornette the established/revered artist in NYC, the relentless soundtrack didn't accommodate a moment's silence.  

Late Night Chicago Radio w. Denny Farrell (Feb.6 - Feb. 12)

Charlie Parker: Hootie Blues.
Ray Brown: Just a Gigolo. 

Chet Baker: I Wish I Knew.

Benny Carter: Prelude to a Kiss.

Dinah Washington: Squeeze Me.

Bud Powell: Yesterdays.

Jim Hall/Paul Desmond: The One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else.

Kay Starr: It Had to be You.

Barney Kessel: I'm Glad There is You.

Bud Shank: Shank's Pranks,

Ella Fitzgerald: Goin' Out of my Head.

?: You Made me Love You.

Joe Williams: Every Time we Say Goodbye.

LISTEN 24/7.

Album review: Soft Machine - Thirteen (Dyad Records)

Theo Travis (flute, saxes, Rhodes, electronics); John Etheridge (guitar); Fred Thelonious Baker (bass guitar); Asaf Sirkis (drums, percussion)

It’s a strange and beautiful thing to witness a band with sixty years of history sounding not just alive, but newly awakened. Soft Machine - the psychedelic adventurers who once shared stages with Hendrix, the Canterbury visionaries who helped define jazz fusion before the term even existed - return with Thirteen, an album of thirteen new tracks that feels both deeply rooted and unexpectedly fresh.

What has always set Soft Machine apart is their willingness to inhabit contradiction: experimental yet melodic, precise yet spontaneous, cerebral yet playful. On Thirteen, those contrasts are magnified. The sound is broad and cinematic in places - widescreen, atmospheric, alive with colour - yet close, intimate and intensely personal in others. Music that can bloom with orchestral expansiveness, then fold into the quiet of four musicians breathing as one.

Album review: Josie Falbo - Kickin' It (self)

Josie Falbo (vocals) + (collective): Jeremy Kahn, Chris Sargent, Marshall Vente, Steve Million (piano); Eric Hochberg, Lawrence Kohut, Scott Mason (bass); Bob Rummage, Tom Hipskind (drums) + horns and the Crystal String Section.

So many musicians, so many permutations that it's impossible to list them all with any degree of accuracy in the space allotted which is why it's been hanging around in my in-tray since the world began, or so it seems.

Falbo has been singing professionally for 50 years and, although this is only her third album you've heard her voice many times exhorting us to, among other things, dine at McDonalds, fly with United Airlines, bank at Nationwide and drink Budweiser  with maybe a Coke chaser. In other words, a singer of jingles.

And why not? It's a regular paycheck as opposed to an album that's subject to the vagaries of public taste. No such worries with a Big Mac or a bottle of Bud!

Album review: Tim Garland & Geoffrey Keezer - Keezer (Tim Garland Music)

Tim Garland (mezzo-soprano/soprano sax); Geoffrey Keezer (piano).

You learn something every day particularly when it comes to saxophones. Until I played this duo version of Chick Corea's La Fiesta I didn't know there was such a beast as a mezzo-soprano saxophone. Pitched in F - a tone above an alto - it offers yet another variation of saxophone sound. 

On the above track Garland whizzes around the instrument with his customary dexterity. If he'd been driving a space ship he'd be on a mission to Mars. Keezer hangs on in there providing his own impetus to the gravity defying musical astronaut.

Garland sticks with the instrument for all but two of the nine tracks only reverting to the conventional soprano for Carousel and Keezer's Ghost in the Photograph.

Farewell to Brain Carrick: St Gregory's RC Church, South Shields - Feb. 4

It was a dreich day on South Tyneside. St Gregory's RC Church stands on Borough Road, just off Sunderland Road. Many mourners were there to pay their respects to Brian Carrick. Clarinettist (and tenor saxophonist), Brian was a devotee of the music of New Orleans, over the years he made many visits to NOLA, playing at many of the haunts where some of the legendary New Orleans jazz musicians once played.

Brian, an Honorary Citizen of New Orleans, was played in by The Old Rugged Cross (a recording of Brian himself), which he no doubt played on countless occasions at gigs. Following a lengthy service, at which many musicians were in attendance, Brian was played out with another of his own recordings, St Philip Street Breakdown. Russell           

Stockport Jazz

This Sunday Stockport Jazz welcomes Stockport-based tenor saxophonist Zac Harrison to the Moor Club, accompanied by Paul Hartley (guitar), Peter Hartley (bass) and Eryl Roberts (drums).

Sunday 8th February 2026

8-10pm, doors open at 7.30pm

£5 entry on the door, all welcome

The Moor Club, 35 Heaton Moor Road, Stockport SK4 4PB  (next to the Elizabethan PH)