Robert Mitchell: Lifting The Lid Festival
London

For three nights at the Pizza Express Jazz Club, former Tomorrow's Warriors pianist Mitchell presents the demanding art of improvised solo piano as exemplified by six gifted practitioners. The internationally-feted giants are Bheki Mseleku (Thu 13), John Taylor (Fri 14) and Django Bates (Sep 15). The rising stars are Zoe Rahman, John Escreet and Mitchell himself. Mitchell can sometimes seem as if he's poring over all the intricacies of jazz, soul, funk, Latin and classical music, moving them restlessly around as if rehearsing a chess problem. But if he can be fascinated with music's fine detail, and mostly indifferent to its hot licks, he's as concerned to communicate as anyone - it's just that he's convinced that an artist with something urgent to say will grab an audience whether their personal language sounds familiar or not. Lifting The Lid is very likely to prove the point.

· Pizza Express, W1, Thu 13 to Sep 15