Christine Tobin // Partisans

Christine Tobin

Irish-born singer/songwriter Christine Tobin has been living in London since 1987. Her work is firmly rooted in a tradition that emphasizes storytelling on a musical bedrock that creatively blends blues, folk and jazz; a territory that is occupied by such luminaries as Joni Mitchell, Cassandra Wilson and Nina Simone. Her innovative and expressive style has led the Guardian to call her the “Bjork of Euro jazz”. She has recorded six albums for Babel , one of the UK's most dynamic and creative indie labels. Her music has been described as authentic, streetwise, radical and romantic. John L. Walters of the Guardian says she possesses a “24-carat voice” and Jazzwise hail her as “probably the most adventurous jazz singer of her generation in this country, with the ideas and willingness to push back the boundaries and explore new territory with each new album.” Christine works regularly on the UK jazz scene, appearing at Ronnie Scott’s, The Pizza Express Soho Jazz Club, Jazz Café and many reputed international festivals. Her earlier work includes stints in Django Bates’ Delightful Precipice, Tim Garland’s Lammas, and she has worked in bands with Julian Argüelles, Kenny Wheeler, Joe Locke, Clark Tracey, Gary Husband and Billy Childs amongst many others.

“She should be on a global stage rubbing shoulders with fellow troubadours like Cave, Mitchell and Cohen...It's a tribute to the quality of Tobin’s writing that there are no weak spots in this excellent collection”
John L Walters, The Guardian ****

“Tobin’s voice is commanding and poised throughout and her husky scat singing is a delight. She’s occupying a niche that’s her own and the possibilities are enormous.”
Mike Barnes, The Wire

Partisans

London-based jazz-rock band Partisans is the connecting link between the golden generation of British jazz around Django Bates, the Argüelles brothers, Iain Bellamy and the young lions such as Led Bib, the Portico Quartet and Acoustic Ladyland.

Founded by guitarist Phil Robson and saxophonist Julian Siegel in 1996, they soon created a musical world in its own right, somewhere between catchy funk grooves and the readiness to always challenge entrenched attitudes and pushing hearing expectations beyond their limits. The quartet’s unusual mixture of styles incorporates elements of all directions of jazz and beyond.

Whereas many musicians in their milieu wore themselves to the ground in alternating projects, Partisans showed how a band could function over a long period of time. Although they have merely recorded four CDs during the band's lifetime, these bear witness to a distinctive, captivatingly logical musical language that follows its very own grammar indeed.