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New art exhibition celebrates The Age of Jazz in Britain

Marking 100 years since jazz reached Britain, London’s Two Temple Place venue will reopen to the public on Saturday 27 January 2018, with its seventh annual Winter Exhibition, ‘Rhythm & Reaction: The Age of Jazz in Britain’, produced by the Bulldog Trust in partnership with The Arts Society.

Curated by Catherine Tackley, Head and Professor of Music at the University of Liverpool, the event will bring together painting, prints, cartoons, textiles and ceramics, moving film, instruments and the all-important jazz sound to explicitly examine the influence of jazz on British art, design and wider society.

Tackley told: “This exhibition tells the story of the ever-popular jazz age in new ways, focussing on British depictions of jazz to understand what the music meant to artists and assessing the resultant image of jazz in the public sphere, as well as considering how jazz was encountered in everyday, domestic environments. Above all, the exhibition links the music with the aesthetics of art produced in response to it, uniquely foregrounding the impact of jazz music on ‘jazz age’ art.”

The exhibition is free to the public, and open from 27 January to 22 April (except Tuesdays) at Two Temple Place, London, WC2R 3BD. More at www.twotempleplace.org.

A new menswear collection has been launched at London Fashion Week, inspired by jazz. Young designer Nicholas Daley began his creation after finding harmony between two contrasting images: one of a Scottish Shetland farmer wearing a tweed baker boy hat and a one of Miles Davis taken almost 100 years later, wearing the same style of hat.

The collection takes its name ‘RED CLAY’ from Freddie Hubbard’s 1970 soul-jazz fusion album, a significant record which Daley cites as a long term influence, alongside classic Blue Note record sleeves, which he has developed into knitwear styles working with the Scottish knitwear company William Lockie. He has also developed bespoke herringbone tweed with fabric mill Lovat.

Contemporary jazz artists Yussef Dayes, Mansur Brown, Alfa Mist and Shabaka Hutchings all performed a live set wearing the designs. Daley said: “It’s not just about what I’m doing, it’s about appreciating the craftsmanship creatively and musically, whether it’s my fabric developed in Scotland with all the knitwear taking colours from the Blue Note album covers, or the craftsmanship of what these guys [the musicians] do – I’ve got so much respect for them and I’m honoured that they were up for it, their jam brings such positive vibes.”

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