Red Groove is a different kind of jazz book, filled with spirited and well-informed essays by a man who has listened to and loved the music passionately and critically for more than 50 years. Searle emphasises the musicians’ links with the real social and political world of which they are a vital cultural part, as well as demonstrating how jazz has become a world musical phenomenon with his writing on jazzmen and jazzwomen and their musicianship, from as far apart as Japan and Argentina, Chicago and Sheffield, Bengal and Benin and Iraq, Norway, Cuba and Cape Town.

"A delightfully detailed and imaginative evocation of innumerable moments of recorded and live magic. There’s rigorous scholarship here, yes, but essentially Red Groove is a dazzling celebration, motivated by a sense of respect, gratitude and love." - Robert Wyatt

Chris Searle is mostly known as an educator. He came to national fame when sacked for publishing his students' poetry – and was eventually reinstated by Margaret Thatcher, then Minister of Education! He has worked as a teacher in Canada, Tobago, Mozambique, Grenada and England.

His books include Lightning of your Eyes, Classrooms of Resistance, Words Unchained, This New Season, We're Building the New School, The World in a Classroom, Grenada Morning and The Forsaken Lover (for which he was awarded the Martin Luther King Prize) He is the jazz correspondent for the Morning Star and his other jazz book is Forward Groove (Northway).

From journeymen musicians to stars with many albums to their name, Mixed Messages includes interviews with 21 American jazz musicians – on music, mostly, but the world intrudes, as it does with the best of jazz music. The musicians range from the trombonist Louis Nelson, who was born in 1902, through the New Orleans pianist Ellis Marsalis, who is still playing and on to Byron Stripling, who plays trumpet with his Columbus Jazz Orchestra. Peter Vacher has been interviewing American jazz players since the 1950s and this is his second collection of interviews.

Mixed Messages is lavishly illustrated with rare and original photographs and will be of interest to any serious follower of jazz.

Peter Vacher knows everybody in the jazz world. His interviews
and articles have appeared throughout the English speaking
world, including in the Melody Maker, Jazz UK and CODA.
His previous book of interviews is Soloists and Sidemen
(Northway Press). He also writes obituaries of jazz musicians
for The Guardian.

Anita Klein paintings are collected worldwide. She divides her time between her studios in Tuscany and London. Though the Looking Glass is published to coincide with a solo show spread across two central London galleries, the Bankside Gallery and Menier Gallery. The book is a celebration of the artist’s ‘two lives’ and the different cultures she lives in, featuring over 80 full colour reproductions of the artist’s latest work.

Anita Klein studied at Chelsea and Slade Schools of Art. She has exhibited internationally and public collectors of her work include the British Museum and the Arts Council. Her work is warm, witty and instantly recognisable. Anita Klein lives in London. She was elected President of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers in 2003. This is her third book for Five Leaves.

A new set of 50 full colour paintings inspired by Tuscany, to tie in with a major exhibition at Bankside Gallery in April 2009.

"Celebrating oases of joy in the quotidian, Anita Klein builds a personal archive, brimming with charisma and wit, that can be identified with by everyone" - Britart.com

"There are no desperate attempts to shock, expose or outrage; simply poignant moments showing the things which you would most miss if they were taken away from you."
- Helen Smithson, Ham & High.

"A blithe demonstration of intimacy" - William Zimmer, New York Times

"At a time when the art world seems to be full of artists attempting to shock and denigrate, Klein’s intimate, life affirming work comes as a welcome breath of fresh air" - Vincent Eames, The Fine Art Partnership

"The pictures, which celebrate the small moments of life which often go unappreciated, are warm, witty and quite delightful"
- Julia Weiner, Jewish Chronicle

"It is nice to have a real humorist recruited to the ranks of gifted painters. She is to be congratulated on livening up our dreary lives."
- Art Review

"Star of the show for me is the spare, knowing, subversive and comic work of a young painter called Anita Klein."
- Godfrey Smith, Sunday Times

About the author: Anita Klein was born in Sydney, Australia and moved to England when she was eleven years old. She studied at Chelsea and the Slade schools of art. She is a fellow and past president of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers and has work in many private and public collections worldwide. Her first book: Anita Klein: Painter Printmaker is available from Five Leaves, Price: £9.99.

This biography of Evelyn Gibbs RE marks the tenth anniversary of her death, and is published to coincide with a retrospective touring exhibition of her work, organised by the University of Wales, School of Art at Aberystwyth.



Evelyn Gibbs was a painter and printmaker, portraitist and war artist, etcher and engraver, illustrator of children's books and pioneer art educationist. She founded the influential Midland Group of Artists, was active in the Artists' International Association and the Women's International Art Club. Her book, The Teaching of Art in Schools, remained in print for over thirty years.

Evelyn Gibbs: Artist and Traveller includes her early years in Liverpool, her scholarship at the British School at Rome, and her time as a lecturer at Goldsmiths' College. Evelyn Gibbs spent the war years in Nottingham, organising public art exhibitions with the AIA and there she married Hugh Willatt (later Secretary-General of the Arts Council). Gibbs was the founder of the Midland Group of Artists, organising major exhibitions of local and national artists. In later years she returned to London, living and working at the Trevelyan Trust studios. Her exhibitions were hugely popular and reviewed nationally, her work ranging from the most exquisite prints of landscape and figures to the late paintings of Gozo's saltpans.



The book is illustrated by etchings, prints and drawings from throughout Evelyn Gibbs' career, many are in colour. Pauline Lucas is an artist, living and teaching in Nottingham.

"This excellent collection of essays... written by true enthusiasts... to illustrate the rich visual and cultural content of Yiddish cinema"' - Association of Jewish Libraries

"...a fascinating anthology which should appeal to anyone with an interest in Jewish history or film studies" - Jewish Chronicle

"...the first book on the subject of Yiddish films to be published in the UK and deserves a wide readership." Bimah

Published in association with the European Jewish Publication Society


Contents:

Foreword - Arianne Ulmer Cipes
Yiddish film and the American experience - Joseph Cohen
The Jazz Singer and its reaction in Yiddish cinema - Eric Goldman
Joseph Green - Chaim Pevner
Ost und West: Old World and New - Jeffrey Shandler, New York University
Sunny Skies and Green Fields - Joel Finler
The Light Ahead - Sylvia Paskin
Freylachs on film - Michael Alpert, YIVO
The crooked road to Jewish luck - Barbara Alikhani
Nosn Bekher fort aheym: a Yiddish film for the Soviet homeland - Laura Greene
The only 'I' in the world: religion, psychoanalysis and the dybbuk - Ira Koningsberg, University of Michigan
The devil and Beethoven: convergent themes in Yiddish film and literature - Dafna Clifford, SOAS
Uncle Moses - Hannah Berliner Fischtal
The celluloid closet of Yiddish Film - Eve Sicular
Gender rebellion in Yiddish film - Eve Sicular
A century in the life of Sholem Aleichem's Tevye - Ken Frieden, Syracuse University
The Goskinds on Jewish life in Poland - Bryan Burns, University of Sheffield
Descendant dybbuks: Yiddish cinema and Hollywood - Alex Gordon, Spiro Institute
Nathan Altman - Joel Finler