EIF 26: Up Late - Jazz Jam

The Hub, Edinburgh - 12/08/26

Domo Branch (drums) and Joe Webb (piano), with Anthony Hervey (trumpet), Summer Camargo (trumpet), Joe Webb (piano), Paloma Ximena (saxophone) and the Rising Stars of Jazz – Liam O'Neil (trumpet), Arda Daltaban (alto sax), Zoe Downs (tenor sax), Enzo Keyan Mpore (double bass), Douglas Wright (piano), Oisoin Hayward (drums).

American jazz drummer, composer, band leader and educator Domo Branch has been a recurring featured artist at the Edinburgh International Festival since his first appearance in 2023. A regular collaborator with Wynton Marsalis among others, he launched this Up Late: Jazz Jam session in front of an enthusiastic, sold-out audience at the Hub, alongside London-based pianist Joe Webb.

These sessions constitute musical daring at its finest. Branch and Webb (who has also performed around the world, from Ronnie Scott’s to Blue Note China) met for the first time not long before this demanding two-hour late night gig, based around standards but with plenty of improvisational flare.

Appearing shortly after performing with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in a tribute to Duke Ellington at Usher Hall, the pair put the programme together alongside auditioning and mentoring the festival’s latest conservatoire-trained Rising Stars of Jazz.

The atmosphere at the Hub was quite different to the formality of Usher Hall earlier. It was, as someone remarked afterwards, “a blast”. Branch is an engaging raconteur, as well as a drummer whose emotional scope and musical sensitivity (layered over masterful technical skills) reaches well beyond his years. He makes fellow performers and audiences alike at home with the best traditions of jazz, making tunes that span many decades live and breathe with contemporary vitality.

This evening we were treated to a whole array of material performed by different configurations of players – ranging from Billy Strayhorn (‘Isfahan’) and Jerome Kerr (‘All the Things You Are’), through to Earl Hines (‘Blues in Thirds’) and Johnny Mandel (‘Emily’).

Among the highlights were young drummer Oisoin Haywood shining on the Sonny Rollins number ‘Tenor Madness’, and the many duets and friendly duels featuring stellar Marsalis soloists from the earlier Ellington concert alongside the captivating Rising Stars.

A truly energising evening of music-making from Domo Branch and friends, concluding with a rollicking ‘big band’ rearrangement of his ‘Edinburgh Blues’, written for the Festival in 2024. This time the drummer re-titled it ‘Global Blues’, because, he declared, this crazy world of ours would be better for more Edinburgh in it!

* Domo Branch’s latest album is Hand of Gifts (2025). www.domobranch.com‍ ‍