Sunday night proved a spectacular end to a magnificent week, as the EFG London Jazz Festival closed with a tribute to spiritual jazz legend Don Cherry at the Barbican. It was a family affair onstage, with Kahil El’Zabar’s legendary Ethnic Heritage Ensemble joined by Don’s daughter Neneh Cherry, eldest son and internationally renowned pianist, David Ornette Cherry, and granddaughters Naima Karlsson and TYSON.
The avant-garde trumpeter pioneered a movement in jazz alongside his wife, Moki, when the pair began to live and perform together in the late Sixties. They dubbed their mix of communal art, social and environmentalist activism, children’s education, and pan-ethnic expression ‘Organic Music’, and a celebration of this life well-lived seemed especially poignant as the festival celebrated its third decade.
