Turner Sims Team: Spring Picks!

My pick of the season is The Breath. I’ve been loving listening to the haunting sound of this beautiful duet at home and can’t wait to see them live!

My other pick is corto.alto. I downloaded the album after listening to one track on a Turner Sims playlist and have been listening to it constantly. It is such a world away from what I’d associate with Turner Sims that I’m really excited to see where this will take our musical offering.

My staff pick is The Breath – just love the vocals and folky vibe.

My pick for Spring 2024 is Maya Youssef. Her album Finding Home is full of heart and beautiful melodies. From the lively Jasmin Bayati to the mellow and heartfelt sound of My Homeland, it’s an eclectic and moving album. I love the idea of finding home in music and can’t wait to hear her perform live in the beautiful acoustic of Turner Sims. Jasdeep Singh Degun’s performance at Turner Sims was a standout for me. I bought his album on the night and every time I listen to it, I play the final track, Redemption (reprise), at least twice. It has fast become one of my favourite pieces of music. It makes me want to turn the volume up, close my eyes and really listen.

My staff pick is corto.alto, the current project of Liam Shortall There’s such a buzz around the Glasgow nu-jazz scene with lots of cross-pollination between individual sub-scenes creating exciting new sounds. Scottish music is surprisingly very diverse, with a Scottish folk influence on improvised music but also loads of other types of ‘jazz’ emerging, from hip-hop, soul, electronic, latin, funk, punk, heavy jazz etc. You can tell that everyone is having a lot of fun! As Liam says ‘Everyone that knows about the Glasgow music scene, knows.’ I really enjoyed Saltlines last year, a wonderful blending of folk and spoken word from Gigspanner Big Band performing with Raynor Winn. Stunning multi-instrumentalists, beautiful words and music weaving together to create a very special night.

My pick is Ute Lemper because I simply adore her voice – have already got my ticket!

My best ever experience at Turner Sims was hearing my all-time favourite pianist, Alfred Brendel, play Beethoven. He had a way of making the notes melt seamlessly into each other.

My pick this season is The Breath. I absolutely love Ríoghnach Connolly’s voice, it is so expressive. Closely seconded by Olivia Chaney – another incredible voice! The remix of Circus of Desire has been on my playlists since the day it came out.