O'Higgins and Luft
O'Higgins and Luft Play Monk and Trane
Dave O’Higgins - tenor saxophone
Rob Luft - guitar
Scott Flanigan - organ
Rod Youngs - drums
For established giant of the UK jazz scene, O’Higgins, this will be his 21st CD as leader. For young “firebrand” Rob Luft, this will be his 2nd. They will be leading a quartet with Irish organist, Scott Flanigan and American drummer, Rod Youngs. The repertoire will be made up of Thelonious Monk compositions (expect some rarely heard ones!) and tunes played by John Coltrane with especial reference to his choice of standards and various collaborations in the 1950s.
Both Monk and Trane were “modernists”, but also steeped in swing and the rich tradition of the be-boppers. Dave and Rob intend to respect this lineage whilst putting their own mark on it. Expect some swing, fun, grooves and moods from this exciting new collaboration.
“O’Higgins plays with quite exceptional fluency and his fund of ideas never runs out.”
The Observer
“A stunning player in the neo-bop vein, with an apparently effortless flow of coherent ideas, beauti-ful time and a highly developed harmonic sense.”
JAZZ GUIDE
Dave O’Higgins’ tenor and soprano sax sounds are highly personal and recognisable, with a clear sense of melodic development and adventure. A popular performer with the public, with an excel-lent sense of pacing and presentation, he has a wide palette from Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, John Coltrane, Joe Henderson through to Stanley Turrentine and Michael Brecker.
Dave is a highly regarded educator at the LCCM, where he is the Jazz Pathway Leader.
He also runs a small specialist jazz recording studio (JVG), in search of the optimum way of record-ing jazz musicians through a combination of old techniques (á la Rudy Van Gelder) and newer in-novations.
Rob Luft is an award-winning 25-year-old musician from London, and has been described as one of the UK’s most prominent and talented young contemporary jazz guitarists. Praised by The Times ‘to achieve great things in the future’, Rob was the recipient of the 2016 Kenny Wheeler Jazz Prize in association with Edition Records, and he also received the 2nd Prize in The 2016 Montreux Jazz Guitar Competition. His debut album, “Riser”, was released in July 2017, to widespread critical ac-claim from the European jazz media. John Fordham wrote in The Guardian that it’s a “very sophis-ticated debut, but given Luft’s old-soul achievements since his early teens, we should have heard it coming”.
Concert highlights include performances with artists including Django Bates’ “Saluting Sgt Pepper”, Iain Ballamy, Eddie Parker’s “Mister Vertigo”, Loose Tubes, Laura Jurd’s “Dinosaur”, Tommy Smith’s Scottish National Jazz Orchestra (SNJO) & The Hamish Stuart Band.
“So young and so talented!”
Jamie Cullum, BBC Radio 2
“…an extraordinary talent!”
Julian Jospeh, BBC Radio 3