EFG London Jazz Festival announces its Summer Series – four very special concerts in June and July 2023 across Barbican and Eventim Apollo.
SHAKTI
KANDACE SPRINGS + ARTEMIS
BRANDFORD MARSALIS QUARTET
ABDULLAH IBRAHIM TRIO
EFG London Jazz Festival returns this November, with an exciting line up of international artists, inspiring collaborations, themed strands and special creations. Before that, the festival team kicks off the journey with a series of global jazz stars taking over the Barbican and Eventim Apollo across June and July. This summer series features concerts by global icons Shakti, Kandace Springs + Artemis, Branford Marsalis Quartet and Abdullah Ibrahim Trio.
SHAKTI
Tuesday 27 and Wednesday 28 June 2023, Eventim Apollo
Following word of the Summer 2023 release of This Moment – their first new studio album in 46 years – revolutionary world music ensemble Shakti will bring return to London for two special shows.
Born in the mid-1970s out of the deep artistic and spiritual connection bonding British guitarist John McLaughlin and Indian tabla player Zakir Hussain, Shakti’s cross-cultural musical conversation dissolved boundaries with uncommon passion, grace, and dexterity – awakening subsequent generations of musicians to the possibilities of such hybrids in the process. Alongside McLaughlin and Hussain, today’s Shakti features vocalist Shankar Mahadevan, violinist Ganesh Rajagopalan, and percussionist Selvaganesh Vinayakram (son of original Shakti ghatam player T.H. “Vikku” Vinayakram).
KANDACE SPRINGS + ARTEMIS
Tuesday 11 July 2023, Barbican
World renowned Nashville-based singer, songwriter and pianist Kandace Springs will bring her soul-drenched vocals to the Barbican to perform material from her latest Blue Note album, The Women Who Raised Me. Her most personal work yet, the album is her loving tribute to the great female singers who inspired her to become one of the premier jazz/soul vocalists of our time. As Prince once said, 'Kandace Springs has a voice that could melt snow’. Kandace Springs will also perform new, unreleased material.
She will be joined by Artemis, the multinational, multigenerational sextet of visionary female bandleaders and composers. From original music to mind-bending arrangements of eclectic material, they're a band which performs with power, passion, and high-wire intensity.
BRANFORD MARSALIS QUARTET
Wednesday 12 July 2023, Barbican
Saxophonist Branford Marsalis is one of the most influential and revered figures in contemporary music. From his early acclaim as a saxophonist bringing new energy and new audiences to jazz, he has refined and expanded his talents and his horizons as a musician, composer, bandleader and educator – a 21st Century mainstay of artistic excellence.
The NEA Jazz Master, Grammy Award winner and Tony Award nominee is equally at home performing concertos with symphony orchestras and sitting in with members of the Grateful Dead, but the core of his musical universe remains the Branford Marsalis Quartet.
After more than three decades of existence, this celebrated ensemble is revered for its uncompromising interpretation of a range of both original compositions and jazz and popular classics. After the Grammy-nominated Upward Spiral, on which guest vocalist Kurt Elling was seamlessly integrated into the group, the Quartet has followed up with The Secret Between the Shadow and the Soul, its most emotionally wide-ranging and melody driven collection to date. An unrivalled spirit in both live and recorded performances, the Branford Marsalis Quartet has long been recognized as the standard to which other ensembles of its kind must be measured.
ABDULLAH IBRAHIM TRIO
Saturday 15 July 2023, Barbican
South Africa’s most distinguished pianist and a world-respected master musician, Abdullah Ibrahim, returns to London for a mesmerizing evening at the Barbican with his trio Cleave Guyton (flute, piccolo, saxophone) and Noah Jackson (bass, cello).
Any performance from Cape Town’s jazz hero is a journey through a lifetime’s experience; the musical melting pot of his upbringing (gospel and jive, American jazz and classical music, sacred and secular) and the music of his jazz heroes (Ellington and Coltrane amongst them) all skilfully embroidered by his free-flowing piano invention.
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Find out more info on all of these shows at serious.org.uk/summerseries
Huge thanks to our sponsors EFG International Bank for their extended support of the Summer Series alongside the 2023 EFG London Jazz Festival.
