‘I’d take a mediocre album rather than nothing!’: the new music readers want to hear in 2024
Guardian readers are longing for returns by artists from Ariana Grande to Archie Shepp –and even possibly Kate Bush?
February 2022
Surrealism Beyond Borders review – A raging sea of glorious strangeness
Forget Dalí and Magritte. This sprawling survey captures the extraordinary scope of a global artistic explosion, from fantastical feminists to black power activists to Vodou painter priests
February 2021
Archie Shepp on jazz, race and freedom: 'Institutions continue to abuse power'
At 83, the saxophonist has somewhat mellowed his funkily avant-garde music – but his anger at the racial injustice he has fought all his life remains undimmed
October 2020
'Open that door or I'll blow it down!' The jazz legends who caused TV mayhem
They sent talkshow host Dick Cavett fleeing with his fingers in his ears and blasted Ed Sullivan with Haitian Fight Song. Fifty years on, the Jazz and People’s Movement are still fighting to be heard
November 2018
Archie Shepp review – soul, skronk and hot gospel organ
And all that jazz … performers pick their highlights from the 2018 London jazz festival
April 2018
Cecil Taylor obituary
Jazz pianist with a radical improvisation style described as one of the most ‘incorrigibly sublime’ figures in the recent history of music
December 2015
John Coltrane: A Love Supreme: The Complete Masters box set review – fullest version yet of a jazz touchstone
John Coltrane’s endlessly influential album gets its most complete expansion yet with this 50th anniversary set
November 2013
Archie Shepp – review
Archie Shepp: Attica Blues Orchestra Live: I Hear the Sound – review
August 2013
Joachim Kühn/Archie Shepp: Voodoo Sense – review
Germany's elder statesman of jazz piano delivers an unruly but uplifting set, writes John Fordham
May 2009
Archie Shepp/ Napoleon Maddox: Phat Jam in Milano
Maddox's vocal repertoire of cymbal hisses, resonant thuds and motorbike reverberations mesh well with Drake's superb drumming, says John Fordham
July 2007
Archie Shepp, Gemini
(Archie Ball)
December 2006
Archie Shepp, First Take
(Archie Ball)
October 2006
Label of love
Joe Boyd revels in Ashley Kahn's fascinating tale of a seminal jazz record label, The House That Trane Built.
