The NICK COSTLEY–WHITE QUARTET combine their love and deep understanding for the jazz tradition with a truly fresh and modern aesthetic. The band’s repertoire draws on unique interpretations of songs from the jazz canon as well as their own exciting and harmonically rich compositions, recently featuring at the Southbank Centre’s Clore Ballroom and Ronnie Scott’s. The band comprises some of the country’s finest improvising musicians, led by guitarist and composer Nick Costley–White (Snowpoet, John Warren, Pete Hurt, Martin Speake) alongside Matt Robinson on piano (Corrie Dick, Gareth Lockrane), Conor Chaplin on double bass (Bobo Stenson, George Garzone, Laura Jurd) and Dave Hamblett on drums (Ivo Neame, Abram Wilson, Elchin Shirinov). ‘Nick Costley–White has a flair for melody and he crafted some beautiful lines’ – Jazzwise
The TOM MILLAR QUARTET returns to Green Note for their third London Jazz Festival appearance, and fresh from a 20-date album launch tour. The group’s debut album, Unnatural Events, was released in September 2017 on Spark! Label, and was recorded with funding from an Emerging Excellence Award (Help Musicians UK) and Jazz Services’ Recording Support Scheme. The album includes emphatic grooves and rock-out anthems, compositions inspired by the music of legendary Cameroonian drummer Brice Wassy, and a setting of the proto-environmentalist poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. All graduates of the prestigious Royal Academy of Music, the band features some of the most in-demand young jazz musicians in London, all of whom are also successful bandleaders themselves: Misha Mullov-Abbado (bass), Alex Munk (guitar) and Dave Storey (drums). Singer Alice Zawadzki features on two tracks on the album.