O'Higgins & Luft, Dave O'Higgins & Rob Luft
Biography O'Higgins & Luft, Dave O'Higgins & Rob Luft
Dave O’Higgins
tenor and soprano sax sounds are highly personal and recognisable, with a clear sense of melodic development and adventure. A popular performer with the public, with an excellent sense of pacing and presentation, he has a wide palette from Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, John Coltrane, Joe Henderson through to Stanley Turrentine and Michael Brecker. He has relentlessly pursued artistic and sonic exploration and development with a deep respect for the tradition of the music.
Dave’s 21st album recording as leader is a collaboration with young guitar firebrand, Rob Luft, and is out now on the Ubuntu Music label (O’Higgins & Luft Play Monk & Trane- see DISCOGRAPHY). There is a 40-date tour set for the autumn with this thrilling new band, with Rod Youngs on drums and Scott Flanigan on organ.
Dave is a highly regarded educator at the London College of Contemporary Media, where he is the Jazz Pathway Leader.
He also runs a small specialist jazz recording studio (JVG), in search of the optimum way of recording jazz musicians through a combination of old techniques (á la Rudy Van Gelder) and newer innovations.
Dave has worked with some of the world’s finest musicans, including: Joey Calderazzo, Joe Locke, Dave Kikowski, Eric Alexander, Grant Stewart, Max Ionata, Phil Dwyer, Adam Nussbaum, Joe Lovano, Phil Woods, Jimmy Smith, Nancy Wilson, Peggy Lee, Kurt Elling, Wayne Shorter, Eddie Gomez, Billy Childs, Abdullah Ibrahim, Chico Chagas, Stephane Grappelli, Michel Legrand. He has released 20 CDs as leader to date. He also wrote and produced the last Matt Bianco album, “Gravity”.
Also on the CV: Frank Sinatra (the last London appearance - a week at the Royal Albert Hall in 1992) and a tour and album with Ray Charles (Strong Love Affair).
Rob Luft
is an award-winning 28-year-old jazz guitarist from London whose virtuosity has been compared to that of six-string legends John McLaughlin, Al Di Meola & Paco De Lucia. Praised by The Times for performances with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra in 2015, who said he was destined “to achieve great things in the future”, Rob was subsequently the recipient of the 2016 Kenny Wheeler Prize from The Royal Academy of Music, and also of 2nd Prize in The 2016 Montreux Jazz Guitar Competition at the Montreux Jazz Festival. His debut album, ‘Riser’, was released on Edition Records in 2017 to widespread critical acclaim from the European jazz media. John Fordham wrote in The Guardian that it’s a “very sophisticated debut, but given Luft’s old-soul achievements since his early teens, we should have heard it coming”. Following the success of his first album, Rob was nominated for a string of awards – ‘Breakthrough Act’ in the 2018 Jazz FM Awards, ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ in the 2018 Parliamentary Jazz Awards and ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ in the 2019 Jazz FM Awards.
His eagerly-awaited second album, “Life is the Dancer” was released in April 2020 to critical acclaim.
Concert highlights for Rob are performances with Django Bates, The Cinematic Orchestra, Loose Tubes, and Arve Henriksen. As well as leading his own quintet, Rob collaboratively runs several other projects, including a duo with the Albanian jazz/folk singer and ECM recording artist Elina Duni, a mainstream jazz quartet with Dave O’Higgins, and the nuevo tango quintet Deco Ensemble. Rob is also a regular member of some of London’s finest modern jazz groups, such as Byron Wallen’s “Four Corners”, Eddie Parker’s “Airborn”, and the Chris Batchelor/Steve Buckley quintet. His playing has been documented on a wide variety of albums over the past five years, and he appears on the ‘Sweet Sister Suite’ by Tommy Smith’s Scottish National Jazz Orchestra (SNJO); Liane Carroll’s album ‘Seaside’ (Linn Records); two albums from Italian drum virtuoso Enzo Zirilli on Milanese label UR Records (‘Zirobop’ & ‘Ten to Late’); and the latest release from Misha Mullov-Abbado on Edition Records (‘Cross-Platform Interchange’). He was the recipient of the 2015 Peter Whittingham Award as part of two collective ensembles: Patchwork Jazz Orchestra and jazz-rock quartet Big Bad Wolf.
In May 2019 Rob was selected as BBC New Generation Jazz Artist 2019-2022, an accolade granted to “some of the world’s most exceptional young musicians” (Emma Bloxham, Editor, BBC Radio 3). He has also collaborated with UK jazz great Dave O’Higgins on a new recording released on the Ubuntu Music label in October 2019 – ‘O’Higgins & Luft Play Monk & Trane’. The album, supported by a 40-date tour, showcased a thrilling new band, with Rod Youngs on drums and both Scott Flanigan & Ross Stanley on organ.
In 2022, Rob will be touring across the U.K. and continental Europe with several projects, such as his eponymous quintet, the “Lost Ships” project with Swiss-Albanian singer Elina Duni, Ellen Andrea Wang’s Closeness Trio, as well as much much more. Check out the gigs page for more information on Rob’s live touring schedule.
