reviews and quotes
From the review of In The Vortex
[An] instinctive originality on vibes. [Corey Mwamba] is an elemental driving force 4 stars
Manchester Evening News/Dyverse Music
Jazz North-East
Derby-based Corey Mwamba has been described as
the maverick vibraphonist, and many critics regard him as the most innovative player of his instrument since Orphy Robinson.Jazz North-East
the trio in Newcastle (1)
Corey Mwamba is, apparently, a self-taught vibes player. Having witnessed his playing it is hard to believe that he could play as he did - that of a virtuoso. [...] lyrical and swinging.
Bebop Spoken Here blog
the trio in Newcastle (2)
[...]How does he do it? [...] A name to watch for. Bands take notice and have this artist in your band.
Bebop Spoken Here blog
Vortex Jazz Club with the trio, 2010
Mwamba, alive to every musical possibility thrown his way by his bandmates, was constantly selecting the precisely appropriate tone and timbre for the particular moment, either by changing gong-type (covered) mallets for xylophone-style (unwrapped) mallets, or by occasionally playing his instrument with his bare hands or a violin bow, drawing from its keys an astonishing variety of sounds, from mbira-like 'muffled' notes to ringing, sonorous, sustained tones or cascades of single notes, occasionally ending pieces with a subtle reverberating effect [...]
Chris Parker
tHE SponTANeoUS CosMic Rawxtra @ Kings Place
I loved the energetic, sometimes manic but subtle vibes playing of Corey Mwamba[...]
rhythmaning
the trio @ Vortex Jazz Club, 2009
Mwamba excelled in developing phrases inspired as much by bebop as by West African folk, as enchanting as any nursery rhyme and often imbued with atmospheric tonal layering. From within this complex web of melodic expression he isolated and developed the moments of tension inherent within the original phrase to thrilling effect.
Joseph Kassman-Tod
with Arun Ghosh quintet @ London Jazz Festival
[...] Corey Mwamba [...] covered a wide range of dynamics from hard mallet hitting to bowed metallic shivers and subtle striking of the keys with his fingertips, splashes of warm rain across a sultry lagoon, fancifully.
wordsandmusic blog
BBC Jazz Awards
brilliant young black vibes player
The Daily Telegraph
BBC Jazz Awards 2008 Compilation CD
[...]the marvellous solo percussion and wind mash-up of Corey Mwamba's you just GET days like that [well you just DO].
Chris Jones
Orphy Robinson with Corey Mwamba, Wesley Memorial Church, Oxford
[A] duo of Corey Mwamba and Orphy Robinson[...] was a great bit of pairing[...] as vibes players, they have very contrasting styles. Robinson plays with a strong sense of rhythmic pattern that, with his powerful technique, he can maintain over a shifting melodic form.
Mwamba, on the other hand, approaches the instrument with the unexpected movements of a leaping gazelle, inserting phrases, chords, snatches of tune, until he reaches a pitch of excitement and attacks the full keyboard with enthusiasm, at one point even dislodging the keys. Looped rhythmic phrases that both players created on the fly provided a subterranean jungle and a sound world over which both could improvise. It was a magical experience to see these two work together[...]
The Oxford Times
London Jazz Festival with the Monk Liberation Front
[...] On the last Sunday, the Monk Liberation Front set out to play the whole of Monk's compositions through three sets [...] vibes player Corey Mwamba introduced some wit and originality.
The Oxford Times
Monk Liberation Front @ London Jazz Festival 2007
[...] Certainly the most tremendous discovery was the vibraphonist Corey Mwamba, who demonstrated amazing originality and vigour in his interpretations of the themes, in particular Hackensack (duo with drums) and Little Rootie Tootie (duo with baritone saxophone).
All About Jazz [translated from French]
Argentum @ Derby Jazz Week
Corey Mwamba, the balletic young Derby vibraphonist, played the Derby commission Argentum... deceptive art-music diversions from apparent street-sharp hooks... Mwamba's mix of rhythmically driving fast playing and dreamy textural effects.
John Fordham, The Guardian
with Robert Mitchell, 2007
An unassumingly virtuosic performer with one of the subtlest touches imaginable
Chris Parker
Corey Mwamba and Orphy Robinson @ Whitechapel Gallery, London
This is a duet with the range of a dozen musicians. Robinson and Mwamba are both determined to give lie to the received wisdom that they are just vibraphone players and have brought a marimbula, dulcimer, assorted percussion, electronic devices, reeds, brass, steel pan as well as a vibraphone to the small, intimate café at one of London's most adventurous art spaces. While the array of "little instruments" on stage evokes the heyday of the Art Ensemble Of Chicago, the hypnotic, Afro-Asian quality of much of the music boldly upholds the spirit of Don Cherry and occasionally that of Yusef Lateef. Feeling largely if not totally improvised the set unfolds as several lengthy movements whose evolution never stops intriguingly twisting through wiry pentatonic rhythms and blues-inflected melodic statements.
Both musicians also play "pure sound" to great effect. Robinson sculpts long, wistful tones on soprano sax and a Cherry-style pocket trumpet into a miniature ambient suite while Mwamba draws meandering figures from a dulcimer that whirs as woozily as Rimbaud imagined his drunken boat at sea.
Flooding the room with even more sumptuous sound is the marimbula, a giant thumb piano that boasts a dub sensibility as deep and dark as an octopus' garden and although George Martin may not be in the house, Robinson's intelligent deployment of a loop machine makes stage-as-studio a wholly viable concept. This is programming that bumps rather than grinds.
Robinson's lightning quick percussive runs and Mwamba's more fractured statements throw up influences as diverse as Roy Ayers, and Bobby Naughton and so highlight the rhythmic and melodic duality of the vibraphone. Just one of many vehicles driven so inventively by these two masters.
Kevin Le Gendre, Jazzwise Magazine
Symbiosis Ensemble @ Derby Jazz Week
Moving in to the Dance Centre's intimate theatre it's time for Corey Mwamba and his Symbiosis Ensemble to perform Nature's Glory, Fancy's Child - an ambitious suite inspired by the famous 18th century African-born Ignatius Sancho. Ambitious, not just because of the scale of the suite - 12 instruments and an extensive narrative element delivered by Corey - also because of potential for it to become an exercise in worthiness. Thankfully the musicians deliver with subtlety and power in equal measures - the line up includes two sax, violin, trombone, piano, two percussionists and Mwamba's own exuberant vibes. The spoken word elements takes the listener through Sancho's story - from being rescued as an orphaned child on a slave ship to his celebrated life as an educated gentleman, literary figure and renaissance man of Georgian England. The moods conjured by the music are spot on - from the initial darkness of the slave-ship, through to playful and swinging grooves of the growing boy and man, on to a superbly urgent piece encapsulating his letter witnessing an infamous anti-popery riot in London. Corey and the group pull this difficult opus off with finesse and great emotive power.
Derby Evening Telegraph