Hear tenor saxophonist Marcus Strickland and his band Twi-Life at the Cheltenham jazz festival this weekend. His new album Nihil Novi is released by Blue Note this month. The gig is on Saturday, click for details. 

Strickland is sizzlingly good live. I caught him back in 2012 at the now long gone Charlie Wrights in Hoxton after the release of Triumph of the Heavy (Vol 1& 2). Known for his tenure in Dave Douglas’ Keystone band especially on the formidable outing Moonshine  that night he was at the Pitfield Street jazz bar with the stamina to tackle mountainous runs and the subtlety to attribute character and emotion to their lines, the jaggedly yearning ‘Mudbone’ a definite highlight.

The band Strickland this weekend is leading includes singer Jean Baylor and Stanley Clarke drummer Charles Haynes out of East St Louis. Aged 37, originally from Miami, Strickland also used to play with Roy Haynes and as a leader made his mark on FSNT, the Catalan label that Robert Glasper (who guests on Nihil Novi) first surfaced on. Twi-Life already have a live album out on Marcus’ own label, the new one Nihil Novi, meaning “nothing new”, explained in a little detail in the video above, was produced by bassist Meshell Ndegeocello and stylistically spans J Dilla to Bartók with dashes of Afrobeat and bop fed in, according to the label, also significant, Strickland inspired too by DJ beat making and the work of producers like Madlib. SG