Robert Glasper pushes deeper into funk and hip hop on new album Black Radio. Joined by a wide range of rappers and singers including Mos Def, Lupe Fiasco, Bilal, Erykah Badu and Ledisi, with his band the Experiment he tears down musical divisions and challenges jazz people to face up to their preconceptions Exclusive Interview: Kevin Le Gendre.

The Barbican Thistle hotel always has a bustle in mid-November. Enter the foyer as morning gently gives way to the afternoon and you’ll see musicians cradling instrument cases, checking in or out, often under the maternal eye of an officious tour manager intent on ensuring that they either make a taxi for a gig that’s happening now, or a plane for one that’s later. Life becomes one long, ever-changing timetable.

Life becomes the London Jazz Festival. Which, for some artists, means gigs at several venues rather than a single appearance at the cultural cathedral with which the hotel shares its name. Last year Robert Glasper was very much in the former category, having master-blasted at XOYO and Kings Place and master-classed at the South Bank.

If the minor delay in his arrival for our meeting in the foyer could well be the effect of this intensely busy British sojourn, the 33 year-old pianist from Houston, Texas, is bearing up well. Clear of eye and warm of manner, he shows no obvious signs of an R&R deficit, but an action packed stay in an action stations metropolis is something to which he can relate, having recently completed his fifth studio album, Black Radio in Los Angeles. The whole set was recorded in five whirlwind days, during which some nine vocalists dropped by the studio to make contributions. Others emailed verse and chorus.

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New album Trio Libero represents a meeting of minds for Andy Sheppard, Miche Benita and Seb Rochford. For Rochford it’s a case of playing jazz with his childhood hero Sheppard; for Benita it’s the consolidation of previous work with Sheppard on the Melody Gainsbourg project; and for the saxophonist himself it’s all about the quest for a new aesthetic. Duncan Heining talks to the band ahead of the album’s release

What’s in a name? Trio Libero speaks volumes. In those two words, lie promises of commitment, connection, freedom and, most of all, the guarantee of great music. Saxophonist Andy Sheppard, drummer Seb Rochford and French bass maestro Michel Benita first joined forces about three years ago. Theirs was a marriage made in Suffolk, which is pretty damn close to heaven, and it was consummated at last for ECM in a Swiss studio last year.

Michel Benita couldn’t make the interview, though we did speak a few days later. However, we met up with Andy and Seb just before Christmas to talk about the album, their forthcoming tour and what it was that brought three very distinctive musical personalities together. Whilst there have been a few gigs along the way, Sheppard, Rochford and Benita have pretty much kept their powder dry since the trio’s inception at the Maltings in Aldeburgh early in 2009.

“We’ve been waiting to make the record,” Sheppard explains, “but it’s been difficult to get Manfred Eicher and us in the same room at the same time. But saying that Manfred seems to have this ability to zero in and say, ‘Now we make the record’. In a way we were like a bottle of wine in the cellar maturing. He got right in there. The music had matured without incessant touring. He got us in the room and captured it. Now we want to take it on the road and develop it and think about music for a new album.”

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Marking a sizeable shift in emphasis the Neil Cowley Trio return in force on their latest album The Face of Mount Molehill with strings, a new bass player and freshly crafted guitar textures and effects. Cowley talks to Selwyn Harris.

Neil Cowley is seated opposite me at a small table a floor above the Royal Festival Hall foyer ready to tuck into an early lunch of beef and mushroom stew. “I can see the word ‘improvisation’ on your sheet,” he says, just before taking his first slurp. You can detect a kind of mock apprehension in his tone; the 39-year old pianist/writer is more used to being questioned about the j-word but it’s only a short journey from there to the i-word.

His acoustic piano trio’s unique mix of hummable melodies, classical music, clubland high-lows and a visceral indie rock band-like spirit sprinkled with the pianist’s quirky suburban bloke-y humour has been a breath of fresh air ever since they appeared on a contemporary scene generally populated by earnest young, conservatory-educated types. But in general, improvisation is something that has been notable by its absence, at least on recording. And the new album The Face of Mount Molehill, their second for the Naim label released at the end of January, continues in that vein.

Cowley certainly doesn’t lack pedigree as a musician; he’s an ex-classical piano prodigy who performed Shostakovich at the age of 10 to a full house just next door in London’s QEH. But he’s also confessed to a fear of jazz, and of its ‘scene’, that points both to a lack of confidence and a kind of inferiority complex that says you don’t belong here; you won’t ever catch him depping or playing as a band sideman on a jazz gig (“for fun, behind closed doors,” he says.) Nevertheless, just over five years ago Cowley arrived in the ‘genre’ if you like, as the leader of one of the UK’s first post-EST piano trios. Having had some success with his chill-out electronic production duo Fragile State in the early noughties, Cowley became frustrated with the lack of band interaction and also, as he put it, at the difficulty of, “extracting emotion from a chip”.

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