Classical and Jazz: Preview - Loop Festival at The Forge, Camden Town from 16 - 19 March
Published: 10 March, 2011
by SEBASTIAN TAYLOR
MORE than a dozen jazz bands with more than 50 musicians are to play at the third four-day Loop Festival of contemporary jazz opening next Wednesday at the Forge arts venue in Delancey Street, Camden Town.
Loop is a collective of musicians founded six years ago in north London. Its members represent a generation of like-minded musicians sharing resources for artistic collaboration, organising events and promoting recorded music. Weekly gigs at The Oxford, Kentish Town, arranged by the collective, have become a hotbed of jazz creativity over the past three years.
The festival highlights the extraordinary diversity of jazz today.
Opening the festival is a new quartet led by bass player Mick Coady performing his new compositions.
This will be followed by mesmerising French singer Jeanne Added, no doubt singing her acclaimed The Ballad of Camden Town, and by an expanded version of tenor saxist Tom Challenger’s MA.
Other festival highlights include:
• Polymorphic music played two French musicians, reedsman Matthieu Donarier and singer/ keyboardist/ composer Poline Renou;
• High-energy inventive trio trumpeter Tom Arthurs, bassist Jasper Hoiby and drummer Stuart Richie, members of East London’s F-IRE collective;
• New Loop Collective nine-piece project Fringe Magnetic with an extended woodwind and string sections;
• Performance of a new jazz score to accompany 1927 silent film Sunrise;
• Loop founders multi-instrumentalists Ivo Neane and Jim Hart;
• End of festival album launches for duo tenor saxist Mark Hanslip and drummer Javier Carmona; new band Mirror led by keyboardist Dan Nicholls and drummer Dave Smith; and Splice quartet featuring trumpeter Alex Bonney and reedsman Robin Fincker.