Norwich Jazz Festival: Caoilfhionn Rose
+ Jamie Leeming
Manchester’s Caoilfhionn Rose has come of age as an artist, digging deep to find experimental new ways of expressing her wonder at nature’s beauty, her love of music in all its diversity, and her belief in the restorative powers that both afford in the troubled post-COVID world. Vigorous, searching and ever-curious, Caoilfhionn has found a voice at once ancient and modern, intrepidly exploring contemporary technology to transform traditional songcraft for the mid-2020’s.
Caoilfhionn’s music is rooted in a knowledge of folk, jazz and all the twentieth century’s classic tunesmiths, and seems to create a magical, otherworldly space of her own imagining, blending Caoilfhionn’s core piano with synths, and pitting a live rhythm section and saxophone embellishments against ambient samples and future-facing production techniques.
Jamie Leeming
Jamie Leeming continues to shine as one of London’s most beloved jazz guitarists, a key collaborator to artists like Alfa Mist, Tom Misch and Jas Kayser whose second solo album Sequent further impresses his talents as a musician and songwriter.
Celebrated as one of his native city’s busiest session musicians while simultaneously forging a burgeoning solo career is no mean feat, yet Jamie Leeming seems to take this casually in stride. Gaining notoriety through his work on Alfa Mist’s string of cult-classic albums, he then stepped out solo; first in collaboration with pianist Maria Chiara Argirò on Flow, then in 2022 with his debut album proper in Resynthesis. Released on Alfa Mist’s Sekito imprint, the record divulged themes of memory through a spellbinding take on the traditional jazz trio format in a widely celebrated endeavour.
