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Description: Django Bates and Victor Bailey join the BBC Big Band pay homage to the Weather Report visionary, keyboardist and composer who died in September.
Phone: 0845120 7500
Website: www.barbican.org.uk
Email: info@barbican.org.uk
Trains: Tube/BR: Moorgate/Barbican 
Opening hours: Mon-Sat 9am-8pm, Sun 11am-8pm
Extra info: Pub, Parking, Food
Hats off: Django Bates played magnificently throughout
This big-band concert of Weather Report music seemed in mortal danger when its creator died suddenly in September, but Joe Zawinul's family agreed to reschedule it as an all-star tribute instead. Tickets kept selling. Everyone predicted a rich legacy from this Viennese keyboard master, the man who raised jazz-rock to art and then enriched it with world-music rhythms. The BBC Big Band, we also knew, would make fine work of Black Market, A Remark You Made and other arrangements from Zawinul's final album, Brown Street.
But what about the keyboard soloist? When Django Bates was suggested, some saw him as too jittery and lacking in the necessary rhythmic power. Thanks to bass-guitar ace Victor Bailey, they were wrong. The pulsating virtuosity of this Weather Report veteran lifted everyone. Martin France drummed with more venom than usual and Django played magnificently throughout.
Presented by Julian Joseph, with comments from Zawinul's biographer, Brian Glasser, this concert airs on 8 December in Radio 3's Jazz Lineup. It'll be worth catching. Tenorist Stan Sulzmann, trumpeter Henry Lowther and guitarist John Parricelli have their moments on Night Passage and Fast City, but it is Bates who makes the evening special. His unaccompanied prelude to In a Silent Way was a thing of wonder.
Wondrous in a more forthright way on Saturday was Sonny Rollins, ageing superstar of the festival's closing weekend. At 77 he's still a phenomenal tenorman. The passing years just mean that his creativity and stamina, once truly awesome, are now merely remarkable. Eyebrows were raised when his opening number, In a Sentimental Mood, featured solos by his bass-guitarist Bob Cranshaw, trombonist Clifton Anderson and guitarist Bobby Broom before his uniquely raw-toned, chasm-wide saxophone sound finally filled the hall. This pecking order would have been unthinkable a few years earlier, but eventually his probing, impassioned revisions of Someday I'll Find You, Why Was I Born, Change Partners, two rousing calypsos and a final burst of the White Cliffs of Dover raised the roof as of yore.
Goodies on the festival fringe included Tony Kofi's day-long trawl through the complete works of Thelonious Monk, a Jazz Jamaica revue starring guitar legend Ernest Ranglin and honeyed vocalist Myrna Haigh, and Jamie Cullum's sideman stint at bassist Geoff Gascoyne's Cadogan Hall gig on Friday. His sparky piano and vocals warmed up an otherwise genteel evening.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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