Robert Edgar writes:

A fascinating line up from all over the world is due to appear next Monday 9th of July at Pizza Express Dean Street. The group is called Albare iTD (iTD being short for “International Travel Diary”).

– The drummer is Cuban/American Ignacio Berroa. Berroa played with every important band formed by Dizzy Gillespie from 1981 onwards. Dizzy called him “the only Latin drummer in the world, in the history of American music that intimately knows both worlds; his native Afro-Cuban music as well as jazz.”

– German born/New York based harmonica virtuoso Hendrik Meurkens “easily belongs in the same company as Toots Thielemans and Stevie Wonder, both masters of the difficult instrument” (C Michael Bailey/All About Jazz)

-Saxophonist George Garzone has played with Chick Corea Jack DeJohnette, Danilo Perez and John Abercrombie. He teaches at Berklee in Boston, where some of his more well-known students have been Branford Marsalis, Joshua Redman, Mark Turner, Donny McCaslin…..

–Albare himself was born in Morocco and moved to France and Israel before finally ending up in Australia for good. He absorbs music from all over the world (as well as from the high-calibre musicians he assembles from all corners of the globe). Forming a fusion of styles, he also combines a highly sophisticated language. The track Now and Then is remarkable for an unusual combination of descending chromatic harmony with a pentatonic line over the top. But always relaxed and cool.

The gig features material from the group’s new album Long Way (their first for Matthias Winckelmann’s label Enja). It showcases all the international flavours he has assembled.

The album, which London Jazz is offering to news letter readers as this weeks prize-draw, features Argentinean born keyboardist Leo Genovese who brings a contemporary classical feel to some of the pieces and solos; there is a moment in Long Way where it almost sounds like the esoteric Austrian composer Anton Webern has taken his place, and top New York drummer Antonio Sanchez originally from Mexico City.