Django Bates/Norrbotten Big Band - Tenacity review | John Fordham's jazz album of the month

The Guardian 80

(Lost Marble)
A celebration of Charlie Parker and Bates’s own 60th year prompts radical but heartfelt readings of music by both

The centenary year of the birth of Charlie “Bird” Parker is a reminder that the saxophone genius not only accelerated bebop’s transformation of jazz in the 1940s, but galvanised the imaginations of music-makers everywhere. This month also sees the 60th birthday of British composer and improviser Django Bates – like Bird, a wilful subverter of habits in anything from big-band jazz to the expected trajectory of almost any tune. Bates celebrates both occasions on Tenacity, with Sweden’s Norrbotten Big Band – kindred free spirits often reminiscent of the great Loose Tubes orchestra Bates and others created in the 80s.