Anatole Muster launches his second album at the Jazz Cafe [Valentin Neher]

Let’s face it, the accordion family of instruments has never had a particularly prominent role in jazz.
OK, bandoneon player Astor Piazzolla’s tango nuevo featured virtuosic, jazz-like improvisations and his French/Italian collaborator Richard Galliano has worked the bellows with the likes of Wynton Marsalis, Ron Carter and Chet Baker – his jazz chops are not in doubt.

Still, the accordion remains a fringe, rather than a mainstream, instrument. That, however, might be about to change.

It is possible that Anatole Muster will be a Theon Cross-like figure in the jazz world – in the same way that Cross has pioneered a new lease of life for the tuba, Muster might just break the accordion through to a wider audience.

The Swiss-born, but London-based, young man (still in his early 20s) takes the instrument as a starting point for sonic explorations into electronics – there is a MIDI controller, a breath tube and pitch-bender at work – that incorporates jazz and funk. It is underpinned by solid grooves, as you would expect with King Ike-Elechi on drums (the beat behind Knats and Eddie Chacon) and Hugo Piper on bass (Emma Rawicz, Ego Ella May).

Anatole is also a fan of the late Allan Holdsworth (ex-Tony Williams Lifetime, Soft Machine, Level 42) and has transcribed some of the man’s knotty, harmonically complex solos, so expect a few flights of virtuosity, although he certainly doesn’t neglect the melodic potential of the instrument.

Anatole and his band are at Camden’s Jazz Café on May 15 launching his second album hopecore. Tickets: https://thejazzcafe.com/event/anatole-muster-album-release-party/?

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Sam Braysher [Sindija Filipusko]

Just up Parkway from the Jazz Café is the bijou Green Note, which specialises mostly in folk, blues, country and Americana but also finds room for jazz (for example, hotshot pianist Joe Webb is a regular).

On May 18, the alto player Sam Braysher takes to the stage with his trio, playing the songs of Harold Arlen. Don’t know the name? You certainly know his work – he composed the music for the songs in The Wizard of Oz, including Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

There are more than 500 Arlen-penned tunes in all, including That Old Black Magic and One for My Baby, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer.

The highly melodic Braysher is a perfect interpreter of such standards, able to summon up the era with a rich tone, but fiercely contemporary in the way he approaches a well-known song, although you should also expect some less obvious choices from the Arlen catalogue.

He is joined in the Basement Bar by the sympathetic and expressive duo of Sam Watts on piano and Jack Garside on bass.
Tickets: www.greennote.co.uk/production/sam-braysher-trio-plays-harold-arlen/

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Jazz_Andrea Rinciari [Lorenzo Scarpellini]

If you want another deep dive the jazz tradition, try Italian guitarist Andrea Rinciari’s Soho Sessions on the independent ECN label. A player who draws his main inspira­tion from Bud Powell and his contemporaries, this a set of pure bopishness that not only features fluid, precise and swinging work from the guitarist but exemplary tenor from the ever-reliable Alex Garnett.

Taking its inspiration from a time when Andrea was playing in and around Soho most nights, building up a hefty book of standards, the repertoire covers both the familiar (Tea for Two, I Can’t Get Started) and the more obstuse (a Barry Harris arrangement for Beans and the Boys; Sonny Rollins’s co-composition Carvin’ the Rock), all sprinkled with enough invention to sound if not newly minted, then certainly given a freshly sparkling coat of paint.

Andrea features the new record at the
• Pizza Express Soho on May 19 (www.pizzaexpress live.com/whats-on/andrea-rinciari-quartet-ft-alex-garnett),
• the Hampstead Jazz Club on May 22 (https://hampsteadjazzclub.com/whats-on/andrea-rinciari-presents-the-album-soho-sessions/)
• and the Bull & Gate Kentish Town on May 26 (the old Jazz at the Parakeet gig, relocated, see https://jazzattheparakeet.com, which has a selection of other interesting gigs at the Bull & Gate this month.)

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Jazz in the House has returned to Lauderdale House in Highgate with a new season of goodies.

QCBA, featuring trumpeter Quentin Collins and tenor titan Brandon Allen, both long-standing familiars of London’s jazz scene – and Kyle Eastwood’s band – bring the Blue Note classics of Art Blakey, Jimmy Smith, Horace Silver, Hank Mobley, Joe Henderson, Donald Byrd and Herbie Hancock to the House on May 15.

Joining them are Hammond maestro Ross Stanley and powerhouse drummer Joel Barford, so expect fireworks to be plucked from those packed Blue Note vaults.

For tickets and full listing of the concerts, including this summer’s Jazz on the Tea Lawn (June 26), see https://www.lauderdalehouse.org.uk/whats-on/jazz-house