Wheeler with Words: heartstring tugging reveries
Let’s just call this Wheeler week and be done with it given how Wheeler With Words weaves its tapestry of delights.
First of all Kind of Kenny and now Wheeler With Words led by Norma Winstone, Kenny Wheeler’s great collaborator with John Taylor in Azimuth.
Heard for the first time today I easily prefer this to Winstone and Kit Downes’ nevertheless very well received and justifiably so Outpost of Dreams released earlier this year mainly because Nikki Iles on this new album is more Taylor-like.
And that factor means a lot given how important a collaborator the pianist was with Wheeler.
Among the best of the year
Wheeler With Words is shoehorned immediately into our albums of the year list. Personnel also include trumpeter-flugel player Percy Pursglove in the Wheeler role who inhabits his clothes well, saxist Mike Murley, bassist Johnny Åman and drummer Anders Mogensen. Five-star from start to finish a study companion of a work as rewarding for both words and music as Winstone is one of the great jazz lyricists (not breaking news at all by the way) writing today.
Pause to also go listen to the London Vocal Project’s Mirrors released a decade ago for another window into Wheeler and Winstone’s soul of things.
Brief guide to Norma Winstone
Norma Winstone, 83, emerged during the 1960s. From 1977-1994 she was part of Azimuth alongside John Taylor and Kenny Wheeler. And much more recently her trio with Glauco Venier and Klaus Gesing, the marvellous Philip Larkin homage The Soundless Dark with pianist Will Bartlett and new work with Kit Downes are among her best output in a very distinguished and internationally recognised career. Gig goers in Germany can hear Winstone tomorrow night in Hamburg when the singer is performing in Hamburg with the Michel Schroeder Ensemble at the HfMT (Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg).
Somewhere Called Home classic ‘Sea Lady’ from the 1980s is among the material. I was reluctant to pause this album and did only to read some words of Stevie Smith (whose work was important in the artistic prism of Mirrors) before returning:
And the parting is sweet and the parting over is sweeter,
And sweetest of all is the night and the rushing air
Windmill Tilter classic among the WWW material
Going further back the version of Wheeler classic Windmill Tilter‘s ‘Sweet Dulcinea Blue’ is particularly moving. Much covered ‘Everybody’s Song But My Own’ does not disappoint.
Tristesse, a certain chill and so much more it is all a world beyond the riot and dystopia of whir and racket touched upon on such past Wheelerian songs as ‘Breughel’. All in all to us Winstone’s best work since the incredible impact she achieved on the for the ages ‘Just Sometimes’ with Gesing and Venier.
Thanks to your post I found out about the Kind of Kenny album! Thank you. Also, I dind’t know Nikki Iles was on the Wheeler with Words, can’t wait to hear it. Norma and Kit played a show last night in my town, but I didnt see it (tickets were over US$120, too expensive).
Cheers!