Guardian Music — ECMThis nine year-old occasional quartet, nominally led by former Miles Davis and Charles Lloyd drummer Billy Hart, includes a young saxophonist growing in stature, Mark Turner, and Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson. If it has any affinities, they might... more info

Guardian Music — A trip to North Carolina to study bluegrass yielded this lesson: Earl Scruggs was the greatest there ever wasI spent a couple of months last year studying bluegrass in North Carolina, and I learned that there are is one tune you never ask a banjo pla... more info

Guardian Music — Ronnie Scott's, LondonThe young American trumpet sensation Ambrose Akinmusire brought this quintet to Ronnie Scott's amid a clamour of superlatives last May, and the word about his remarkable live shows is due to spread further with his first UK gigs... more info

Guardian Music — You don't need a voice to communicate heartbreak when you can play the trumpet like Miles Davis in his pomp He's a touchstone in jazz conversation, a cornerstone in jazz collections, and this 1954 gemstone is just one dazzling example of his genius. ... more info

Guardian Music — Kings Place, LondonSome of the most beautiful and subtly dramatic large-scale jazz ever crafted came from the pen of Gil Evans, the Duke Ellington-inspired composer/arranger famous for such landmark Miles Davis collaborations as Birth of the Cool and... more info

Guardian Music — Britain may have all but forgotten her, but 80s popstar Sade is a huge star in the US since her 2010 comeback. So what's the secret of her transatlantic success?Just as we've got used to the idea that Adele is now a massive star in America, triumphin... more info

Guardian Music — Kings Place, LondonColin Towns, the one-time rock pianist and TV and film composer, paints big musical canvases, full of colliding characters who sound like relatives of Stravinsky, Zappa, the Beatles, Miles Davis or Kurt Weill. He usually unleashes ... more info

Guardian Music — (Provocateur)European jazz composers and bandleaders have been in awe of Colin Towns since he downsized his movie-scoring career in the early 1990s and launched a scintillating jazz orchestra – feted young Manchester band Beats & Pieces are the lat... more info

Guardian Music — (Naim)Get the Blessing trumpeter Pete Judge says this new album finds the exuberant Portishead-powered quartet "less afraid to be itself than it used to be". With its thundering rock-bass grooves and scorching early Ornette Coleman/Don Cherry horn so... more info

Guardian Music — (F-ire) Yuriy Galkin is a young UK-based Russian bassist and composer influenced by the early Miles Davis and Gil Evans collaborations, Kenny Wheeler, Dave Holland and 20th-century classical composing. He won the Dankworth Composition prize in 2010 f... more info