Less Helvetica more Navarro, FONT returns this autumn. A New York festival championed by Dave Douglas which has been running for years and remains quite possibly the biggest gathering of top trumpet players in any one place at any one time anywhere intent on keeping the art of trumpet, jazz, improv and beyond, stoked and stage centre, the website for more details is: http://fontmusic.org/. Tom Harrell, Jeremy Pelt, Jaimie Branch, trumpet meets Latin America inc. Rachel Therrien, above, and many more are appearing this year. Dates are 5-12 September. 

New work from Kate Westbrook, a homage to Dartmoor, set to music by Mike Westbrook, is a great listening prospect today.

First, a few sound samples.

Kate is one of the most original avant garde jazz inspired performers anywhere. All’s Well That Ends Well leaps to mind listening to these fragments, and particularly these lines: 

I have seen a medicine 
That’s able to breathe life into a stone, 
Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary
With sprightly fire and motion
Lafew, in Act 2, Scene 1.