REVIEW | LOVE SUPREME JAZZ FESTIVAL 2026: A CELEBRATION OF COMMUNITY, SOUL & SOUND

In the UK, there’s a cul­ture of com­ing out in force, wheth­er it’s for gigs, protests, the Brit­ish Grand Prix, parades, or great music fest­ivals. That’s a won­der­ful thing, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing more people than ever are feel­ing lonely and isol­ated, with some even doom-scrolling their time away on port­able devices.

The camarader­ie that comes from people col­lect­ively gath­er­ing for a shared pas­sion is some­thing we get in abund­ance at the annu­al Love Supreme Jazz Fest­iv­al (named after the late John Col­trane’s mag­num opus).

Love Supreme cer­tainly set the mood, helped by the glor­i­ous weath­er we’re cur­rently enjoy­ing. The good vibes were at an all-time high. Me and the homie Kish Kash pulled up early on Fri­day, 3^rd July, to soak it all in.

With press pass in hand, I jumped into the photo pit to exper­i­ence renowned UK drum­mer Moses Boyd and his incred­ible band.

Con­sid­er­ing they had drama get­ting to the fest­iv­al on time, with a motor­way crash leav­ing them stran­ded in limbo for hours, the band took to a packed-out South Downs Stage with a wealth of pro­fes­sion­al­ism, deliv­er­ing a string of won­der­fully com­posed pieces.

We were also treated to some excit­ing exclus­ives from his upcom­ing album. Moses Boyd and his band left the crowd thor­oughly sat­is­fied, offer­ing a glimpse into the mind of one of the fast­est-rising super­stars in the UK jazz scene.

Soon after, the cha­ris­mat­ic Dur­and Bern­arr took to the North Downs Stage, admit­tedly not to as big a crowd as Moses Boyd, much to my sur­prise. The last time I saw him at KOKO in Lon­don last year, he sold the place out.

I put it down to famili­ar­ity, although the crowd grew stead­ily as his set pro­gressed. Dur­and was an immacu­lately pro­fes­sion­al hot mess, as always — being silly, dan­cing, and singing to per­fec­tion. His three-piece band was abso­lutely on point.

He ran through choice cuts from his new album, Burn­arr, includ­ing the single “HELLO!”

The real joy was see­ing the crowd almost double in size by the end of his set, purely on the strength of the songs and the elec­tri­fy­ing live performance.

The head­line act on the North Downs Stage was the “rock­stars” of the new UK jazz scene. Ezra Col­lect­ive have lit­er­ally come through the sys­tem from the ground up, start­ing out by request­ing to be added to the intro­duc­tion stages at Love Supreme over a dec­ade ago, to now head­lining a jam-packed Fri­day night at Love Supreme Jazz Fest­iv­al 2026. The crowd stretched from front to back.

Drum­mer and bandlead­er Femi let us know that this has been a jour­ney of more than 10 years, built on hard graft, ded­ic­a­tion, and phe­nom­en­al music.

I call Ezra Col­lect­ive the “rock­stars” of jazz because I had to take a moment just to observe how engaged the crowd was. They respon­ded to every com­mand from the band, sang along to their favour­ite songs, and danced togeth­er in unison.

Ezra Col­lect­ive delivered a fit­ting head­line per­form­ance under the cov­er of night, bring­ing a phe­nom­en­al first day of the Love Supreme Jazz Fest­iv­al to a close.

We had a won­der­ful time and will cer­tainly be back again next year!

8.5/10

SKAN…