We had a great time at Southbank Centre on Fiday afternoon marching 200 students into Royal Festival Hall in a New Orleans funeral procession before the quartet took to the stage to give a dazzling performance of original compositions based on the life of prodigy pianist, Philippa Schuyler. Check out the pictures as well as the track, Adventures In Black And White.
Join us Friday afternoon at Southbank Centre as we celebrate the life of Harlem born mixed raced pianist, Philippa Schuyler. The performance by the quartet at 5:30pm will be preceded by a New Orleans processional and presentation by Kids Company and myself along with the Londorleans Brass Band at 4:40pm. The entrire performance is free so bring all your friends and family to this special tribute.
Unedited Limited Edition CDs will be available on the day!
Follow this link for more details:
Here's a look at the dates for the Abram Wilson Quartet 2012 Tour. We're all excited about the 24 dates thus far as more are being added so stay tuned because we may be playing at a venue near you very soon!
Joining us for a select number of performances will be tenor saxophonist - Jean Toussaint, alto saxophonist - Peter King and trombonist - Winston Rollins. We start the year with a free gig at Southbank Centre on Friday 27th January at 5:30pm.
Click HERE for more details about all upcoming dates.
Happy New Year! 2011 has been a great year and I wanted to leave you with some pictures and video from the last 12 months. See you in 2012!
Special thanks to Ben Amure, Emile Holba and Rich Spencer for their fantastic images.
I'm very happy to announce that Alex Davis, our bass player for the Abram Wilson Quartet has been accepted into two exceptional conservatoires in London - Trinity School of Music and Royal Academy School of Music! We're all really excited for him as he has made phenomenal progress and I'm sure will continue to do so. Check out this video which features Alex on our recent performance which generated rave reviews this week. Our fourth review of the gig can be read below, bringing us to the end of an incredibly prosperous year! Congrats to Alex and Happy Holidays to all!
REVIEW: Sebastian Scotney for LondonJazz - Dec. 18, 2011
PHOTOS: Ben Amure
On Saturday I was at Abram Wilson's "New Orleans Christmas," bringing good music and a thoroughly good and warm vibe to Kings Place Hall One, with Jamaican vocal legend Myrna Hague, highly impressive Birmingham pianist Reuben James, Alex Davis on bass and guest drummer Jason Marsalis, joined at the end by Wilson's regular drummer Dave Hamblett. They were playing new music, and the confidence and the extroversion grew righly, greeably, through the course of the evening. Everything Wilson does with this group is based on dialogue and communication rather than display, and is all the better for that. As MC, poet, singer, composer (perhaps above all as composer), and as an ebullient presence on the London scene, we are truly blessed to have our very own resident New Orleans trumpeter.
REVIEW: Sally Churchward, Daily Echo, Dec. 20, 2011
Photos: Ben Amure
A WARM slice of New Orleans at Christmas was served up to warm a chilly Southampton December evening at Turner Sims Concert Hall.
An extremely talented and charismatic trumpeter, vocalist, poet and more, Abram Wilson, pictured right, brought his stunning quartet to the venue for A New Orleans-Style Christmas Story.
The evening featured Abram’s short Christmas poems paired with soul-warming jazz.
They were joined by singer Myrna Hague who ratcheted up the style for the evening.
Her rich, warm vocals were the perfect accompaniment to the quartet and I would have gladly listened to her much more.
The poems and compositions covered such seasonal subjects as children being desperate to open their presents, being reunited with family members and sibling rivalry.
The real delight of the evening was watching all the musicians bouncing off each other and taking the compositions in unexpected directions.
Drummer Jason Marsalis drove the packed audience wild with an amazing, and exhausting-looking, solo during Soul Train.
Even double bassist Alex Davis put his instrument down to take it in.
It would have been impossible not to have been captivated by young pianist Reuben Jones, 18, whose talent was matched only by his enthusiasm as he bounced around on his stool while his hands whizzed over the keys.
It was clear that the band felt something special was happening on stage at the Turner Sims and I felt privileged to be a part of it.
A much-deserved encore ended the evening perfectly with a New Orleans jazz twist on the Christmas classic Winter Wonderland.
“If everyone had fun like this then we probably wouldn’t have any problems,” said Abram at the end of the night.
Stepping out of the auditorium into the cold night air, warmed by the experience we had just shared, it would have been hard not to agree.
On Saturday, trumpeter Abram Wilson presented two sets of new material for his quartet on the theme of a New Orleans Christmas – a scene-setting description and fragment of autobiographical poetry preceded each number. As with Thomas, Wilson’s Christmas started on Christmas Eve and involved presents, mischief and aunts, and, as with Tracey, Wilson’s music captured mood by refreshing established practices.
Wilson, now resident in London, was raised in New Orleans, and his recollections are free of Thomas’s dark corners. Strong on family values, they provided a convenient peg on which to hang some very good music – his parents grabbing late-night quality time was a surprising touch, with slinky rhythms and muted trumpet setting the tone.
Wilson’s stepped modal themes were well crafted and he had the musicianship and invention to sustain interest over both sets – pinched notes and Big Easy slurs added sparkle. There were guests – deep-toned vocalist Myrna Hague and drummer Jason Marsalis – and a standout young rhythm section who comfortably followed the rhythmic nuances of Wilson’s compositions. Highlights included Marsalis’s clean brushwork, impeccable beats and the insistent cowbell that drove his awkward-metre solo on “Soul Train”; mature-beyond-his-years pianist Reuben James consistently matching the leader for invention and wit; and the encore-winning “Drum Duel”, with Wilson’s regular drummer added for a fiendish, tempo-shifting two-drum joust themed on brotherly banter.
REVIEW: Alyn Shipton, The Times - Dec. 19, 2011
Photos: Ben Amure
The expat New Orleans trumpeter turns freezing London into a sizzling club in the heart of the French Quarter
They take Christmas seriously in New Orleans, and for a couple of hours of joyous celebratory music and poetry, the trumpeter Abram Wilson brought the seasonal sounds and sentiments of his home town to his adopted city of London. He was helped by his fellow New Orleanean, the drummer Jason Marsalis, younger brother of Wynton and Branford, whose deft hands conjured up the rhythmic complexity of the Big Easy with fluency and grace.
Stylistically, Wilson’s quartet takes mid-1950s Miles Davis as its starting point. The leader shares Davis’s clean trumpet tone, economical sense of melody and penchant for occasional dramatic upper register forays. The band’s young pianist from Birmingham, Reuben James, rolls together aspects of the playing of Red Garland and Wynton Kelly, but his wry showmanship perhaps owes most to Horace Silver. A telling right-hand phrase is marked for the audience by a raised arm, a half smile or a happy rocking to and fro on the piano stool.
But what took the band firmly into New Orleans territory — and away from the Davis influence — was Marsalis. His playing was a gumbo of complex metres, with a lengthy solo built over a recurring cowbell phrase showing how a plethora of variations could be fashioned round it.
Each piece was an original Wilson composition, inspired by a short poem about aspects of a family Christmas, from the anticipation of presents to lavish Creole food. Some lyrics became songs for the charismatic Jamaican vocalist Myrna Hague. She really came into her own on the encore, a Crescent City re-working of Winter Wonderland, where her singing was joined by the amiable voice of Wilson himself. At its best, the quartet played as one man, Alex Davis’s bass locking onto Marsalis’s bass drum and James’s left hand to create a rollicking platform for Wilson’s fieriest solos.
In a piece called Soul Food they left freezing London far behind. We were transported to a sizzling club in the heart of the French Quarter, swaying to the music and ready for the étouffée and jambalaya of a seasonal feast.
Check us out on the Jamie Cullum Show BBC Radio 2. If you miss it, you can still hear it at the link below as well as checking out our final rehearsal before we rehearse with Jason Marsalis and Myrna Hague. Our gig is at Kings Place in London on Dec. 17 and Turner Sims in Southampton on Dec. 18. Book Tickets here: http://t.co/Swm4kDlr and here: http://www.turnersims.co.uk/upcoming-events/2011/autumn-2011/december/new-orl...
Check out The Jamie Cullum Show on Radio 2 here:
This week I had the pleasure to appear on several BBC radio programs and there are more to come! You can hear them by checking out the followings links:
This is a half hour show I did with Ken Clarke on BBC Radio 4 celebrating the life of legendary post-bop trumpeter, Clifford Brown. http://bbc.in/uH2rmu
Next up was a live broadcast of an interview I did on The Robert Elms Show on BBC London as well as a selection of live performances performed by the Abram Wilson Quartet which promotes the big gig featuring Jason Marsalis and Myrna Hague at Kings Place in London on Dec. 17 and Dec. 18 at Turner Sims in Southampton. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00lvz21/Robert_Elms_05_12_2011/
I'll be doing a recorded interview along with several selections played by the band in the studio which will air on The Jamie Cullum Radio Show on BBC Radio 2 again to promote the Xmas performace. It will air on Dec. 13 at 7pm. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rr86v
The last is a BBC Radio 3 program called In Tune which will air live on Dec. 15th at 4:30pm. I will be doing an interview and performing with the the Abram Wilson Quartet again to promote the Xmas performace! http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017ssqx
Tickets are starting to sell fast. Hope to see you there! http://t.co/Swm4kDlr