Exquisite London jazz double bill approved by Gilles Peterson
19:30 - 20:30
EMMA-JEAN THACKRAY PRESENTS WEIRDO
The Guardian once described her as “A crossover star”. She herself likens it to a “multi-dimensional multi-instrumentalist and producer”. Emma-Jean Thackray's debut Yellow immediately made it as Album of the Year at Jazz FM and she is not only the darling on BBC6Music but also at Glastonbury where she once performed 5 times during one edition.
Thackray just released her second album Weirdo on Gilles Peterson's prestigious Brownswood label. Fully recorded and played in her London flat and with lovely guest appearances from the likes of Kassa Overall and Reggie Watts. The result? An organic mix of grunge, pop, soul and jazz. Say “George Clinton channelling Kurt Cobain”. Or more refined: Meshell Ndegeocello meets Louis Cole (Knower / Clown Core) meets visual artist Yayoi Kusama meets Robert Glasper and Kate Bush.
21u00 – 22u30
JOE ARMON-JONES
Wow: the visits to AB by London-based keyboard-player, producer and songwriter Joe Armon-Jones can no longer be counted on one hand. His first visit dates from 2018 during a historic AB two-day event to launch Gilles Peterson’s collector We Out Here, let’s just say: the album that put the London jazz scene on the map. Later, Armon-Jones dropped by four more times with his band Ezra Collective.
His most recent album Turn To Clear View dates from 2019, but Armon-Jones hasn’t been idle in the meantime: he toured the world, built his own studio, recorded an album with dubstep legend Mala and was to be heard on albums by afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen as well as fellow Londoners Binker Golding, Moses Boyd and Nubya Garcia.
Enter 2025: the year in which he releases a veritable double album: All The Quiet Part I and – how did you guess – All The Quiet Part II, with a spate of special guests including Asheber, Greentea Peng, Wu Lu, Hak Baker and Yazmin Lacey. He says to be heavily inspired by the radical productions of dubmaster King Tubby and dub soundsystems tout court: “I got really into exploring the sound world of dub. Taking that process and applying it to jazz, funk, and all those other musics that I really love”. Welcome back, Joe Armon-Jones!