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Ray Russell

Ray Russell is one of the UK's best and most innovative jazz and jazz fusion guitarists and is also a music producer, composer and session musician. His TV compositions have included A Touch of Frost, Bergerac, Plain Jane and A Bit Of A Do. He is well known in the UK for his contributions to bands led by fellow jazz musicians such as Mike Gibbs, Ian Carr's Nucleus, Georgie Fame, Bob Downes and Harry Beckett. However he has also worked with major stars such as Gill Evans, John Barry, Tina Turner, Phil Spector, The Ronettes, Van Morrison, Art Garfunkel, Dionne Warwick, Bryan Ferry, Jack Bruce, Cat Stevens, Phil Collins, Alex Harvey, Georgie Fame, Cliff Richard and Frankie Miller. His own cooperative band RMS (Ray Russell, Mo Foster and Simon Phillips) has recorded the albums Centennial Park and Take Me to the Sun. This line-up first appeared at Montreaux Festival on July 1983, after their set, they also played backing Gil Evans that same night. The set included a lengthy rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s 'Little Wing'. This concert was later released, credited to Gil Evans with RMS, under the title "Take Me To The Sun", assembled with another studio track recorded in 1988.

Ray Russell has made several albums including: Turn Circle(1968); Dragon Hill(1969); June 11th 1971 Live at the ICA (1971); Rites & Rituals (1971); Secret Asylum (1973); Ready or Not (1977); Childscape (1994); Why Not Now (1999); Live at the ICA: Retrospective (2000); Goodbye Svengali (2006); The Composers Cut (2006) and A Table Near the Band (2006); Now More Than Ever (2013); The Celestial Squid (with Henry Kaiser) (2015).

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Radio & Podcasts

Ray Russell Plus New Releases From Ears&Eyes

Read "Ray Russell Plus New Releases From Ears&Eyes" reviewed by Bob Osborne


This week we feature a selection of mostly new releases including the recent one from guitar legend Ray Russell who has enjoyed two distinct careers: one as an esteemed session player and award-winning film and television composer, another as an ingenious guitar experimentalist and free-thinking collaborator. There are also some new albums from the ears&eyes label and ground breaking sounds from Bonjintan and the trio of Dan Blake, Jon Irabagon and Ingrid Laubrock. Last but not least, I feature a ...

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Album Review

Ray Russell: Fluid Architecture

Read "Fluid Architecture" reviewed by Mark Sullivan


Veteran British guitarist and composer Ray Russell has been active in free jazz, fusion and as a session player. His whole range of experience finds a voice in the opener “Escaping The Six String Cage," as he and synthesist Eric Baldwin explore a wide range of guitar sounds. Slide guitar gives way to lyrical volume pedal swells, followed by rhythmic loops leading into free playing. Lyrical delay evolves into an abstract soundscape, finally returning to slide. Several tracks ...

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Album Review

Harry Beckett: Joy Unlimited

Read "Joy Unlimited" reviewed by Chris May


The Barbados-born trumpeter Harry Beckett moved to Britain when he was 19. His first known recording session came in 1961 alongside Charles Mingus. This happened during the London sessions for the Tubby Hayes album All Night Long (Fontana, 1962), which was chronicled in the 2020 All About Jazz article Jazz & Film: An Alternative Top 20 Soundtrack Albums. To debut with Mingus was an auspicious beginning and Beckett never looked back. Seemingly loved by everyone who met ...

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Interview

Ray Russell: Playing with Time

Read "Ray Russell: Playing with Time" reviewed by Ian Patterson


Each time guitarist/composer Ray Russell releases a new album, it feels like a comeback. Now, More than Ever, Russell's debut on the Abstract Logix label, comes seven years after Goodbye Svengali (Cuneiform Records, 2006), his heartfelt tribute to composer Gil Evans. Although Russell may drop off the radar for periods of time, he's never really far away from our ears. For much of the past 30 years, Russell has composed award-winning music for a plethora of hugely popular TV shows ...

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Album Review

Ray Russell: Now, More Than Ever

Read "Now, More Than Ever" reviewed by Ian Patterson


English guitarist/composer Ray Russell has flown under the radar for most of his 45-year career, dividing his energies between his own projects, sessions for some of the biggest names in popular music and composing award-winning music for television and film. Russell's wide-ranging musical interests have meant that his own recordings have sometimes been separated by long gaps, and this is probably the main reason why he isn't better known. Seven years after Goodbye Svengali, Russell's tribute to composer Gil Evans, ...

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Album Review

Ray Russell Quartet: Turn Circle

Read "Turn Circle" reviewed by Roger Farbey


Vocalion has done it again, with a long overdue reissue of Ray Russell's first album Turn Circle (originally released in on the CBS Realm series), and superbly remastered by Michael J. Dutton. Russell is probably the most heinously undervalued jazz guitarist in the world, which is ironic because he is undoubtedly one of the best. His style is his own, sounding like no other guitarist.This album, recorded in 1968, is quite beautiful and the rather quaint cover art ...

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Album Review

Ray Russell: Goodbye Svengali

Read "Goodbye Svengali" reviewed by Ty Cumbie


Heavy chops and slick production values are the dominant traits of this recording by British guitar wizard Ray Russell. While offering due tribute to the guitar master's powers, I would have liked to have heard more ideas and fewer effects. Russell was called up from the minors near the time fusion was starting to catch fire, and his sound remains redolent of that period. His playing, on single-note runs and complex, edgy chord voicings, is formidable indeed ...

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Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Joy Unlimited

Cadillac Records
2020

buy

Fluid Architecture

Cuneiform Records
2020

buy

Now, More Than Ever

Abstract Logix
2013

buy

Turn Circle

Vocalion
2007

buy

Goodbye Svengali

Cuneiform Records
2006

buy

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