Category: Features – Archive

November 24, 2016 / Features - Archive

As a girl Ingrid Jensen desperately wanted to be a singer, but she was too shy. Not wanting to give up on music altogether, her solution was to aim to be another kind of vocalist, via an instrument. Eventually she tried the trumpet. “Oh!” she recalls thinking. “You can combine…

August 15, 2016 / Features - Archive

Heard any Bach on a banjo lately? If that conjures up a tinny twanging to drive you screaming from the room try a dose of Bela Fleck. Who else uses the much-maligned instrument to play Bach and Bartok, to duet with jazz maestro Chick Corea or to colour the desert-tinged…

August 12, 2016 / Features - Archive

At first it was a form of light relief: someone to sing a few songs and break up the real business of playing jazz. Then it became the fashion, so every band in the 1930s – the swing era’s heyday – suddenly had to have a singer. For women it…