Featured in The Guardian's Top 30 Ones to Watch 2021

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"​Tori Handsley emerges as a leader”

The Guardian

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"A great musician! ...Sounding pretty cool, eh?" Cerys Matthews, BBC6Music

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“Tori rides a Moses Boyd beat, with the relentless up tempo improvisation melding together beatific harp notes and traces of club culture.” CLASH Magazine

"An inspirational force of energy" Moses Boyd, BBC Radio 1Xtra

"A major force on the UK scene... The music itself is the message. On ‘Polar Retreat,’ you literally hear fragile polar ice caps melting” Downbeat Magazine.

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“Tori Handsley...really breaks out here alongside some killer drums from the great Moses Boyd!” Dusty Groove, USA

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"Handsley summoning a distorted raw power” Andy Cowan, MOJO Magazine

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"A really beautiful debut album by harpist, pianist Tori Handsley...a bit of a Chick Corea feeling on this one...” Gilles Peterson, BBC 6 Music

 

"Tori Handsley brings the stinging attack of an electric guitar" Mike Hobart, Financial Times.

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“It is a harp-led album with a difference, liberated from the instrument's soft-focus stereotype. It has delicacy and nuance to match its grit and sinew.” Chris May, All About Jazz.

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"Punky attitude and bold approach" Paul Bradshaw, Straight no Chaser  

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“Tori’s sonic personality springs from her every note: her optimism, invention, love for the natural world and sheer artistry. It all expresses a new life in music." Chris Searle, The Morning Star

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​"Handsley has forged a reputation for fearless music making" Jazzwise Magazine.
 

"Finally, something really new: an ideal album to escape from the prevailing mannerism that characterizes much of contemporary jazz." Claudio Bonomi, All About Jazz, Italy.

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“Tori Handsley's uncluttered approach delivers a fresh angle to the scene.” Paul Pace, Ronnie Scotts

 

“Tremendous impact here from the Dorothy Ashby inspired Freedom sessions leading light harpist Tori Handsley.” Stephen Graham, Marlbank

"Tori's almost like her own ecosystem, like the precious ones under the sea she reflects on in her track Out of Sight, Out of Mind." Debra Richards, Jazzwise Magazine.

"Art is about what you see and hear in the world and what you want to share. For me, that's always been our natural environment and looking at our place in it as humans." Tori Handsley in The Morning Star, Chris Searle.

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"...an increasingly popular artist with unique music to open people’s mind…” Music Is To Blame

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“...this gets better with every listen.” Jan Paersch, Podcast Rauschen, Germany

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​"Handsley doesn’t so much play as manhandle the harp. Furiously pressing the pitch pedals like a church organist in a hurry to get to the pub, she created groove, chest-thumping power." Rob Mallows, LJNews

 

 

 

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