20th October 2015: Kora Band receive 4 star reviews from The Evening Standard and All About Jazz for ‘New Cities’ (release day Friday 23rd October) and appear on STV Edinburgh.

The Kora Band, an ensemble which integrates the uniquely entrancing timbre of the kora — a traditional 21-string harp from West Africa — into a jazz context, present their third release New Cities and first for Whirlwind.

New Cities presents a suite of compositions constructed on the foundations of traditional west African Mandinka music. Each song takes an element from a traditional piece, deconstructs it, and uses the resulting material as the basis for a new composition.

Prior to it’s release on Friday 23rd October, New Cities has already received 4 Stars in both The Evening Standard and All about Jazz. Here are the highlights:

An inspired third release for The Kora Band, a transatlantic quintet exploring the links between contemporary jazz and traditional West African music.”
4 Stars, Evening Standard (see below)

“The Kora Band doesn’t really sound like any other group. This is an amazing feat, in a century supersaturated with music of every hue, and a convincing testament to the innovative sound of a jazz band successfully incorporating non-Western traditional instruments.”
4 Stars, All About Jazz (full review)

“New Cities is an accomplished work.”
Bebop Spoken Here (full review)

Kora Band also made an appearance on STV Edinburgh last week. Watch it on STV’s Twitter timeline here