“Motion Unfolding” Jazz Magazine/Jazzman No. 630, October 2011
Elected “Revelation!” award. Review by Franck Bergerot I wrote a review of “Alba Lux”, this quartet’s first album, in December 2008 in which I had expressed the joy I experienced in rediscovering the same feelings I had had 25 years earlier when first listening to Marc Ducret, Malo Vallois and Serge Lazarevitch. Three years on, I find this music has matured, ripened... Read More
“Motion Unfolding” Jazzthing November 2011
British guitarist, living in paris, Tam de Villiers is not only an outstanding guitarist, but also a poet with originality. Two of his texts, which are interpreted here by the Belgian singer David Linx, opens and closes the album “Motion Unfolding”. From references to antiquity, to mythical figures, there are bewitching words – some of which seem familiar –... Read More
“Motion Unfolding” Les Dernières Nouvelles du Jazz review
Review by Jérôme Gransac After Alba Lux in 2008, Tam de Villiers Quartet reiterates the experience with Motion Unfolding. The quartet has matured incontestably its music, and the guitarist and composer puts to good use all his apprenticeship done during his diverse experiences spun out in the clubs of Paris, from the smallest, little-known and often ephemeral, to the grander... Read More
“Motion Unfolding” Batteur Magazine, October 2011
Reviewed by Laurent Paranthoën After “Alba Lux” released in late 2008, here is the second album of this young British guitarist living in France for almost 10 years. With a rich experience gained over many collaborations, he delivers us a powerful music, rooted in the influences of his time, thanks to an astonishing maturity in his writing. Guitaristic influences are... Read More
“Alba Lux” CitizenJazz.com, 02 Febuary 2009
CD of the Month Review by Jérôme Gransac A Frenchman by adoption since five years ago, Tam-Lynn de Villiers, of British origin learnt music from a young age with Tommy Smith in Scotland and then in Leeds, in the north of England. In 2003, he moved to France, and continued his studies at the Conservatoire de Montreuil and played with Marc Ducret (who is full of praise for his... Read More
“Alba Lux” Jazzman, Janvier 2009, Numéro 153
Review by Jean-Marc Gelin Un-complexed. Tam de Villiers is a particularly promising young guitarist. After having lived several years in Scotland, he moved to France where studies took him under the guidance of Malo Vallois and Marc Ducret. If our feelings are not wrong, we can hear that, along with his musical comrades, he is attracted to a very contemporary New York jazz style.... Read More
“Alba Lux”, UK reviews
JAZZWISE MAGAZINE, September 2009 This ex-Leeds College jazz guitar student was taught by Mike Walker, and now back in France is working in a similar contemporary jazz-rock vein with nods to Krantz via John McLaughlin. JAZZ UK, June/July 2009 Venturing further out, guitarist Tam de Villiers releases Alba Lux (Yes Or No), a kind of hard bop into free bop sort of thing with playing... Read More
“Alba Lux” Jazz Magazine, December 2008, No. 598
Review by Franck Bergerot It’s a strange modernity which delights me here. The same that I looked for at the end of the 1980’s in the music of Marc Ducret, Malo Vallois and Serge Lazarévitch. The guitar, its limitations and its heritage made them write music which really gave wings to the knowhow of improvisation during that epoch. A modernity which now dates twenty years:... Read More
“Alba Lux” culturejazz.net 31, octobre 2008
Review by Thierry Giard Tam DE VILLIERS Quartet: illuminated guitar. In Jazz music, the guitarists are legion, as are pianists. If we exempt the wild Manouche, and the die-hard swingers and boppers, who distinguishes those incarnate of the post seventies generation, after Hendrix, The Who, McLaughlin or Santana and others? The quest for the unprecedented created new norms which... Read More
