Our recent recommendations for The Bristol Fringe
What do Shabaka Hutchins, Dinosaur, Ligeti Quartet and Emma-Jean Thackray all have in common? Avant-garde pianist extraordinaire Elliot Galvin! Elliot’s astonishing solo outings conjur haunted electro-acoustic music halls filled with the Keith Jarrett's classical fusion and Nils Frahm’s pulsing synths. Total unmissable for all nu-jazz disciples.
For this one off solo concert Elliot will be playing reinterpretations of his critically acclaimed recent album 'The Ruin', alongside improvisations that combine soundscape modular synths with exploratory acoustic piano.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Fabio Ferri is the Bristolian-Italian Frank Zappa! His mind-boggling prog alchemy is forged with a mathematician’s precision and a mad scientist’s unhinged brilliance. Jazz-fusion meeting avant-garde classical to take you to new musical frontiers FFO: Allan Holdsworth, Nik Bärtsch, Jaga Jazzist, late Soft Machine.
Fabio Ferri (full band) + Benkins (DJ set)
A unique experimental exhumation of the outlandish jazz manouche of Jacques Montagne. This fresh quartet - ft. Adrian Utley (Portishead), Alex Bishop (on Django’s beloved steel-string Maccaferri guitar), Riaan Vosloo (double bass) and Ross Hughes (clarinets) - will astound with a sound somewhere between Tchavolo Schmitt, Roland Kirk and Link Wray.
Jazz Manouche - Electric Django Reinhardt - Experimental Improv
Free entry! Celestial cinema from multidisciplinary artist collective Snowapple: ‘A Moonless Night’ is a surrealist cabaret that follows the moon’s fall to earth, merging animation, poetry and dance in a dreamlike, shapeshifting odyssey.
A short film from music collective, Snowapple
Superlative hard-bop ft. Ronnie Scott’s veteran in-house drummer Spike Wells totally reinvigorated in a trio spanning three generations. And hey, they can really wail - sailing through a repertoire of Monk, Ellington, Lee Morgan and Stone-Lonergan’s fresh compositions. Spellbinding stuff from Bristol’s House of Jazz (aka the Fringe).
Riley Stone-Lonergan, Spike Wells, Eddie Myer