Festival 2023

‘Live at the London Jazz Festival’ showcases Matt Ridley's quintet - The Antidote - in peak form, performing a new, previously unrecorded suite of four tunes.

EXTRAORDINARY FESTIVAL APPEARANCE FROM YOUNG AND CRAZY HORSE IN CENTRAL PARK Neil Young and Crazy Horse were deep into a blistering set on Central Park s Great Lawn when Young made an announcement: We re joining forces up here for you. Dave Grohl and Dan Auerbach then took the stage with their guitars to tear through a ten-minute version of Rockin in the Free World, slashing power-chords while reverently watching the master take over, Young wrenching hazy, piercing, dissonant squeals from his Les Paul and shaking violently. Young s feedback-soaked set - which ranged from Powderfinger to new cuts like the autobiographical Born in Ontario and the spooky jam Walk Like a Giant was an epic finale to the Global Citizen Festival, which drew more than 60,000 people to Central Park on 28th September 2012, and also included the Black Keys, the Foo Fighters, Band of Horses, and others. Organized by the Global Poverty Project to raise awareness about extreme poverty, the concert incorporated films about malaria, polio and other tragic diseases, played between performances while speakers dropped sad statistics ( every minute we lose a child under five to preventable diseases; 300,000 women die every year of poverty).

In recent years London has become an epicenter for experimental, visionary jazz.

Even with a career cut short by illness and a premature death, guitarist, singer, and songwriter Rory Gallagher left his mark in the blues and rock worlds. His hard-charging, intensely rhythmic playing style on his 1961 Stratocaster still casts a long shadow over rock & roll: Queen's Brian May imitated not only his playing but his gear early on; he credits Gallagher with the root of his sound. Eric Clapton said it was Gallagher who got him "back into the blues." Johnny Marr acknowledges a great debt as well: After learning how to play the guitarist's classic Deuce album track-for-track at 13, he revealed Gallagher's influence throughout his career.