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Today a living legend joins the show! Even for a successful composer and arranger in Hollywood, Gordon Goodwin’s numbers are impressive: A 2006 GRAMMY Award for his Instrumental Arrangement of “Incredits” from the Pixar film The Incredibles, three Emmy Awards, and thirteen GRAMMY nominations.

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Multi-award winner as best jazz vocalist - BBC Jazz Awards 2007 and 2004 and Parliamentary Jazz Awards 2018,alongside nominations from the Jazz FM Awards 2013 and Downbeat Magazine 2017 - Ian Shaw has amassed a number of highly acclaimed internationally released albums and is a popular performer both in the UK and the US. He has been cited, along with Mark Murphy and Kurt Elling, as one of the world’s finest male jazz vocalists.

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Jamie Cullum (born 20 August 1979)[1] is an English jazz-pop singer, songwriter and radio presenter. Although primarily a vocalist and pianist, he also accompanies himself on other instruments, including guitar and drums. He has recorded nine studio albums, three compilation albums, one live album and twenty-four singles. Since April 2010, he has presented a weekly Tuesday evening jazz show on BBC Radio 2.

Today he comes on The Jazz Podcast to chat to Rob Cope.

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Face to Face, Nikki’s new album is out today! As a founder member of the hugely innovative Creative Jazz Orchestra in the early 90s, Nikki Iles came to prominence working with musicians such as Anthony Braxton, Vince Mendoza, Mark Anthony Turnage, Kenny Wheeler and Mike Gibbs.

Mike subsequently booked her for one of her first recording dates with great American musicians, Steve Swallow and Bob Moses on the CD “By The Way” on AH HUM records. For many years, Nikki served a lengthy apprenticeship in the North of England playing with the cream of British and American jazz such as Peter King, Iain Ballamy, Art Farmer, Peter King ,Tina May ,Tim Garland and Jim Mullen.

Many of these relationships were re- kindled later ,when after a car accident, Nikki finally decided to make the move to London in 1998. Here she joined the groups and toured and recorded with musicians such as Steve Arguelles, Mick Hutton, Martin Speake, Stan Sulzmann and Julian Arguelles and Norma Winstone .

Several awards followed with the BT British Jazz Award and an IAJE Award in America for services to Jazz. Although well known as a pianist, composition still remains a major part of her musical life.

The breadth of Nikki’s artistic vision has led her to disregard the arbitrary boundaries of the jazz scene and most notably, commissions have included a collaboration with American dancer Mimi Cichanowicz , the UMO Jazz Orchestra in Finland, “A Gentle Prayer “ - London Sinfonietta , “Red Ellen” - Tim Garland’s Northern Underground Band, “Carillion – The LPO’s Renga ensemble and this year “The Caged Bird” from the International Society of Jazz Arrangers and Composers.

Nikki was honoured to have her piece HUSH commissioned by the National Youth Jazz Orchestra featured at the 2012 Proms ( BBC TV) and more recently write for the great American singer, Kurt Elling and The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra.

Recently she has been particularly busy - she was awarded the prestigious Ivors Academy Gold Badge and the Ivor Novello Award - winning the best large ensemble composition in 2021.

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Nicky Schrire is a multitalented and inventive British-South African vocalist and composer based in Toronto, Canada. Her work has seen her likened to vocalists Joni Mitchell, Norma Winstone, and Esperanza Spalding with The BostonGlobe’s Jon Garelick noting that “though her approach has earned her comparisons to Gretchen Parlato and Becca Stevens, the similarities are superficial…she’s got her own thing, and it’s very much worth listening to.”

A graduate of the South African College of Music and New York’s Manhattan School of Music, she studied with Anthea Haupt, Peter Eldridge, Theo Bleckmann, and Dave Liebman. Schrire has performed in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, London, Dublin and South Africa, with musicians including Ben Wendel, Gerald Clayton, Fabian Almazan, Nir Felder, and Taylor Eigsti. She released three critically acclaimed jazz albums-2012's "Freedom Flight", 2013's "Space and Time", and the 2014 EP "To The Spring"-which earned her comparisons to songwriters like Joan Baez and Mary Chapin Carpenter. Her duo album “Space & Time” featured Grammy-nominated pianists Gerald Clayton, Gil Goldstein and Fabian Almazan. The Ottawa Citizen’s Peter Hum described the recording as “fifty minutes of emotionally eventful, richly crafted music”.

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Mária talks about her creative process and new album, Topol'ana.

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Nils Petter Molvær, Norwegian trumpet player, composer and producer, who takes multiple music styles – jazz, ambient, house, electronic and break beats, as well as elements from hip hop, rock and pop music – and effortlessly reshapes them into unique and dramatic soundscapes of deep intensity.

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Neset made an astonishingly powerful impression when he first emerged onto the European jazz scene as a young saxophonist of protean gifts more than a decade ago.
Django Bates, who was a teacher and a significant mentor at the Rhythmic Conservatory in Copenhagen, had Neset in several of his band, and also appeared on Neset’s breakthrough album, Golden Xplosion (Edition, 2011).

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Greek born with Egyptian roots, electric jazz harpist and composer Maria-Christina Harper is reinventing the sound of the harp in the jazz world. With her anarchic spirit and an interest in exploring what the harp can do, rather than exploring its traditional sounds, she presents her instrument in new and exciting ways. Combining her traditional music roots with free jazz she creates an irresistible, compelling sound cosmos. It’s where East meets West.

Based in the UK, Maria-Christina collaborates with two outstanding, highly acclaimed players to form the Harper Trio featuring drummer’s-drummer Evan Jenkins and the dynamic saxophonist Josephine Davies (Instrumentalist Of the Year, 2019 Parliamentary Jazz Awards).

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Aline Homzy is an award-winning violinist and composer. Originally from Montreal, born to a Québécois mom and an American dad with Eastern-European roots, Aline’s original music reflects her culturally-diverse background.

Beyond composing music, Aline is a regular violinist in the studios of Toronto, recording other artists’ original music. Aline is seeked-out for her lightning-fast sight-reading skills, her deep knowledge of jazz and improvisation and her musicality and upbeat personality. Some artists that she has recorded for include David Occhipinti, Andrew Downing, Iskwé, The Weather Station, Amanda Tosoff and many more. She is also the leader of the string section for SymphRONica (2019 Juno-nominated), Maurizio Guarini’s “A Goblin’s Chamber Music”, De Bouche à oreille – série de spectacles francophone, and many other Toronto- based projects that record and perform in the city. Aline has also performed and/ or recorded with international artists such as Munir Hossn (Brazil), Emma Smith (Edinburgh), Jake Sherman (USA), Leah Michelle (USA), Ed Sheeran (Great Britain), Danilo Perez (Panama), Cho Yongwon (South Korea), Mikko Hildèn (Sweden), amongst others. Aline has performed in halls and venues such as Koerner Hall, Massey Hall, The Glenn Gould Studio, the Burdock, the Great Hall, various stages for the TD International Toronto Jazz Festival, Festival international de jazz de Montréal, Stockholm International jazz festival and many chamber-music and jazz-related concert series.

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