The leaves began to fade
Like promises we made
How could a love that seemed so right go wrong?
– Sammy Cahn from ‘The Things We Did Last Summer’
“I’ll remember all winter long”: Newcomer Alice Milburn (25) is an English jazz singer from Portsmouth, doyenne of the Vaults regular jazz night in Southsea. Much more than a demo or statement of intent First Expressions was recorded in the Hampshire summer at a Gosport studio.
If you like Stacey Kent and Naama you will be in your element dipping into these things she did last summer. Very girl next door it’s the show song type Broadway and bebop “classic” approach to the genre driving things along. So it’s retro and very much a period piece. Milburn has a persuasive voice. She’s an old soul. It’s an enjoyably mercifully uncheesy profile raising start to getting to know her sound.
Covers include the 1930s James F. Hanley Thumbs Up song that Renée Zellweger performed on the soundtrack for brilliant 2019 Judy Garland biopic Judy, ‘Zing Went the Strings of My Heart.’
First Expressions is not dark as night or torch song fodder which I prefer. But nevertheless I liked her ingénue take on the Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn 1940s classic that Frank Sinatra interpreted ‘The Things We Did Last Summer’ that has a vibrant bass contribution from bassist George Balmont. There’s a throw your head back gleefulness to the Milburn vocal too on the singer’s winning treatment of ‘It’s Almost Like Being in Love’ later on the song when the verse is carefully negotiated and the formidable scatting kicks in so when the words return it’s like she has shed a skin and found a new carefree spirit inside.
With the singer are also keyboardist Saul Hughes and drummer Josh Turn plus musical director trombonist Lloyd Pearce who solos on Milburn original ‘Brief Company’. The lyrics despair at the flakiness of a man desirous perhaps of a one night stand. The voice has confidence and personality.
‘Brief Company’ and ‘Zing Went the Strings of My Heart’ are among tracks streaming so far. The full album is out on 24 October. Scat is this steeped in the romance of the songs jazz thoroughbred’s strongest suit.
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Spike enamoured
On Tuesday when I was very briefly in Sligo in the afternoon to hear a set from Freddie Hendrix, I went on a pilgrimage like some sort of homing pigeon to the currently dug up Holborn Street full of road men in hard hats, rubble and temporarily closed to motor vehicles surreality. The idea was to idle over to the Milligan house which is just over from Stephen Street where an entrance to the Lillies cocktail bar is and where Freddie was playing. Spike’s dad lived on Holborn Street. I padded along from the Rendezvous end to sidle up to its front door and gaze. I’d been there before some years ago inside circa The Bright Side of Life, a comedy festival run in the town. By the way regarding the Fred, without fear of losing the thread or indeed (touch wood) plot – lovely gig – hope someone records FH’s Brownie loving new tunes asap.
So, long story short today’s playlist is Spike themed.
The goon of course was a comedy genius and polymath – an extremely funny man who worked as a performer, writer of very amusing novels and memoirs, playwright, inveterate letter writer, jazz trumpeter, Ronnie Scott’s regular, and much else – who best of all even bearing in mind all of the above – inspired Monty Python. He even totally serendipitously appeared in Life of Brian – as a prophet who tries to lead a group in prayer, but gives up and wanders off when he realises everyone has chased after Brian instead.
Jim McNeely’s last goodbye
A final recording called Expeditions with the Frankfurt Radio Big Band from which ‘Arrival’ streams is set for an August release
The project marks McNeely’s final recorded work before his death last September. He worked as the ensemble’s composer-in-residence.
A Chicago-born jazz pianist and composer McNeely after graduating from the University of Illinois moved to New York in 1975. He gained a reputation playing keyboards for groups led by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Stan Getz and Phil Woods. And over his long career, he received 12 Grammy nominations and won a Grammy Award in 2008. He also directed the BMI Jazz Composers’ Workshop for 16 years.
Mentored by Bob Brookmeyer, McNeely developed a bold writing style. He blended rich post-bop harmonies with complex, multi-layered arrangements. His signature sound features fast saxophone runs, punchy syncopated bass lines and dramatic brass accents.
His most celebrated work spans several decades of top-tier big band recordings. He made an immediate mark with East Coast Blow Out in 1989, a groundbreaking suite recorded with the WDR Big Band, guitarist John Scofield, Bass Desires and late period Bill Evans bassist Marc Johnson and Sco head Adam Nussbaum, the revered sticksman later known for his work in The Impossible Gentlemen and with Linley Hamilton.
As chief conductor of the Danish Radio Big Band, McNeely produced the Grammy-nominated album Nice Work. During his long tenure with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, he also crafted albums like Lickety Split and Up from the Skies.
Later in his career, he delivered sweeping symphonic collaborations, including 2022’s Rituals with saxophonist Chris Potter and again the Frankfurt Radio Big Band.
For Expeditions the recording took place in a live setting at Frankfurt’s Hessischer Rundfunk [Hesse broadcasting] Sendesaal studio/hall in June 2024. The compositions range from fanfares and counterpoint to solo features across the brass, woodwind and rhythm sections.
The Expeditions suite is tailored directly to the playing styles of the Frankfurt Radio Big Band’s individual members. Principal players include Steffen Weber, Martin Auer, Heinz-Dieter Sauerborn and Martin Scales.
Oliver Jones, the Canadian jazz pianist who found wider acclaim on turning 50, dies aged 91
Oliver Jones, the Montreal pianist who spent much of his career in the long shadow of fellow Canadian Oscar Peterson, yet quietly built one of the country’s finest jazz catalogues, has died aged 91. His family announced that he died in Montreal on 22 July. Recognition came later than many expected. By the time audiences beyond Canada really caught up with him, Jones was already nearing 50.
Jones was one of those pianists who seemed entirely comfortable inside the tradition. Oscar Peterson was an obvious touchstone, not least because both had studied with Daisy Peterson Sweeney, Oscar Peterson’s sister and the revered Montreal piano teacher who taught them both.
But Jones never sounded like an imitation. His playing mixed fluency with warmth. He could power through a blues. He could let a ballad breathe. Standards always felt freshly considered rather than carefully preserved.
His achievements accumulated steadily. Born in Montreal’s Little Burgundy in 1934, he was performing publicly as a child. After years working as an arranger, accompanist and musical director, including a long spell in Puerto Rico, he returned to Montreal in 1980 and committed himself fully to jazz.
A residency with bassist Charlie Biddle helped relaunch his career. Recording contracts followed. So did international touring, Juno Awards, the Order of Canada, the Ordre National du Québec, the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, honorary doctorates and, in 2023, induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.
The shape of his career was unusual. A child prodigy in the 1930s. Busy professional musician through the 1950s and 1960s. Sixteen years in Puerto Rico as musical director with the Kenny Hamilton Show Band. Then the return home. The breakthrough came with Lights of Burgundy (1986), his Justin Time debut and the record that introduced him to a much wider audience beyond Canada. Festival appearances across Europe, North America and Japan followed.
His recorded legacy rewards exploration. The Oliver Jones Trio (1990) distilled his strengths into the classic piano trio format, full of crisp swing, elegant phrasing and an unforced sense of momentum. Live at Biddles (1991) captured the energy of the Montreal club residency that helped relaunch his career, Jones feeding off an audience that knew every nuance of his playing. Just in Time (1993) showcased his affection for the Great American Songbook, balancing technical assurance with warmth and understatement, while Yuletide Swing (1994) proved that even seasonal standards could sound fresh in his hands, avoiding cliché through rhythmic lift and melodic imagination.
Even after announcing his retirement in 2016, he never entirely disappeared. Occasional performances continued. Tributes grew. The documentary Oliver Jones: Mind, Hands, Heart reflected on both the musician and the man, while honours continued to arrive, recognising not just his playing but the example he had set for younger Canadian musicians. He remained a respected figure on the Canadian scene almost to the end of his life.
Jones leaves behind a body of work rooted in swing, melody and impeccable touch. He never seemed interested in chasing fashions. Instead, he trusted the songs, trusted the trio and trusted the piano. That proved more than enough. Though he was never as internationally celebrated as Peterson, he carved out a distinctive place of his own. His recordings remain among the finest examples of mainstream Canadian jazz from the past half century, played with grace, clarity and an unfailing sense of swing.
Branford Marsalis and Dianne Reeves honour John Coltrane’s centennial
Branford Marsalis and Dianne Reeves pay tribute to John Coltrane in celebration of the jazz legend’s 100th that falls on 23 September with Dedicated to You, a new album featuring the acclaimed saxophonist, his long-standing quartet and the celebrated vocalist. ‘They Say It’s Wonderful’ is streaming now ahead of the album’s release.
The record to be issued on Blue Note revisits the six standards from Coltrane’s landmark 1963 album John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman while adding instrumental interpretations drawn from Steepee’s wider catalogue.
Marsalis says the project on a different repertory tack, following on from many years post-Kirkland circa Requiem a pilgrimage even more deeply “lykief” into Jarrettonia, offers an opportunity to celebrate Coltrane’s musical legacy from a fresh perspective rather than retracing familiar ground. Rather than focusing on the saxophonist’s better-known instrumental work, he chose to revisit John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, widely regarded as one of jazz’s defining collaborations between a singer and an ensemble.
Admittedly he’s not the first to do this: Chicago singer Kurt Elling made the best album of his career tackling this material live on a 2009 release. Can the new album be as definitive a rendering shaped by the post 9/11 world that Elling inhabited in our nowadays very different post-Covid disturbed-by-AI-and-strongman- megalomania reality? It differs in various respects as to approach and not just because it’s a studio recording.
The sound is also even part of the zeitgeist rewardingly across the Atlantic on the London live grassroots gigging scene
What goes around… comes around. And recently on the live London scene newcomer “marvellous” Marvin Muoneké impressed in a co-led concert at Cadogan Hall with fellow UK jazzer Mark Lockheart known for his work with Loose Tubes and Polar Bear.
Having a female singer in the vocals role is fresh and unique. It helps that she’s the greatest female jazz singer alive.
Dianne Reeves is mentioned in the list below of this year’s best jazz vocals albums so far as an inspiration, nb she didn’t have a new album of her own in the first half of the year although I enjoyed the retrieval by Arkadia of a slice of archival action (above) accompanied groovily by Billy Childs – the explanation is that she is one of the classic benchmark voices of our age so the thinking springs from that framework and logic.
DR’s equivalent icon of a male jazz singer for our times is the blessèd Gregory whose considerable weepie of note the mother song ‘Good Goodbye‘ for the film Goodbye June this year is among his finest work. It’s like that Latin motto that goes Finis vitae, sed non amoris – the end of life, but not of love.
Although he initially considered working with a male vocalist, Marsalis said the choice became clear after reflection. “When I woke up the first thing I said was ‘Dianne Reeves,’” he says.
Branford, 65, elder brother of Wynton, was born in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, into New Orleans’ celebrated Marsalis jazz family. The three-time Grammy Award-winning saxophonist first came to prominence in the early-1980s with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers before forging one of the most acclaimed careers in modern jazz.
The soprano saxophone player on Sting’s Quentin Crisp “The Naked Civil Servant” tribute ‘Englishman in New York’ (1987) BM is equally at home in classical music, film scoring and television, he has led the Branford Marsalis Quartet for decades, establishing it as one of the genre’s most respected ensembles. His take on Keith Jarrett’s Belonging was one of last year’s top records.
“Today will be a good day – I’m gonna make it that way“: Dianne Reeves with Amen Corner legend Andy Fairweather Low, the great Chris Barber (1930-2021) and Jools Holland in astonishingly rousing form.
Reeves, 69, was born in the motor city, Detroit, and is widely regarded as one of the foremost jazz vocalists of her generation. A five-time Grammy Award winner, a cousin of The Mothers of Invention keyboard genius George Duke (1946-2013), she has earned international acclaim for her interpretations of the Great American Songbook and contemporary jazz repertoire. She also introduced her voice to a wider audience through George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck, for which she won a Grammy Award for the soundtrack.
Reeves brought a lifelong connection to the material. She said her grounding in the Great American Songbook came through working as a teenager with the trumpeter Clark “Mumbles” Terry, who emphasised melody, lyrics and serving each song on its own terms. She also grew up listening to Johnny Hartman, whose recordings were favourites in her family home.
The sessions brought Reeves together with Marsalis’ long-established quartet of pianist Joey Calderazzo – pal Joey’s brother is London scene face & proper drummer Gene who is in Bruno Heinen’s The W – bassist Eric Revis and drummer Justin Faulkner who took on the mantle of Jeff “Tain” Watts and has grown immeasurably in the role in the intervening years.
Reflecting on Coltrane’s influence, Marsalis says the saxophonist’s achievement lay in his command of musical tradition as much as his willingness to extend it. “He didn’t think of songs as ‘vehicles’; he was sympathetic to the songs he played, and that’s our goal, to be sympathetic to the music.”
- Marsalis and Reeves hit the road this autumn for a big tour that takes in the brand new British Airways ARC venue in Olympia on Saturday 21 November as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival. Tickets are available via the British Airways ARC website.
Christ-Stéphane Boizi
In the video playing ‘Grant Us Peace (Our Father)’ Christ-Stéphane Boizi performs with fellow As The Spirit Leads players tenor saxophonist Jacob Wilson, altoist Lauren Breen, pianist Kezia Abuoma, double bassist Tom Sheen and drummer Sacha Harlan.
Pretty taken to be frank listening today to some of the upcoming debuting work from London trombonist, composer and bandleader Christ-Stéphane Boizi who is preparing to tour his debut album As The Spirit Leads this autumn.
The god fearing one has a sincere project built around faith, community and ensemble playing. And the record draws on the young musician’s gospel upbringing and interest in the jazz tradition, and introduces a set of original compositions.
Ahead of the full release, Boizi has a single called ‘The Sustainer of My Faith,’ featuring tenor saxophonist Ruben Fox and vibraphonist Jonny Mansfield out at the end of July. The piece reflects memories of church worship and a personal relationship with faith, set within a steady, groove-based band sound.
Across As The Spirit Leads, Boizi leads an ensemble including saxophonists Lauren Breen and Jacob Wilson, pianist Kezia Abuoma, bassist Tom Sheen and drummer Sacha Harlan alongside Fox and Mansfield. The group moves between swing, hymn-like material and slower, reflective pieces, combining acoustic jazz forms with influences from church music.
The album out in October on Mark Kavuma’s Banger Factory label spans a range of moods and tempos. ‘Lamentations’ unfolds in rubato lines over a heavy rhythmic backdrop, while ‘Raymond’ centres on swing and saxophone solos. ‘Grant Us Peace Our Father’ carries a simple, song-like character with prominent vibraphone, and the title track features Boizi’s trombone alongside piano. ‘Golgotha’ shifts gradually from darker textures to lighter ones, while ‘Seeds Of Gratitude’ presents a direct statement of thanks.
Boizi takes the music on the road in the autumn as part of Tomorrow’s Warriors’ Warriors Rise touring initiative, alongside David Kayode and Mali Sheard. The tour visits venues including Southend Jazz Festival, the Pizza, Soho, The Bear Club in Luton and Hull Jazz Festival. The programme offers practical support around touring, planning and marketing for the participating artists.
Freddie Hendrix at Lillies
Hard bop’s the highway
The blistering power and contrastive touch of tender is the night balladry from Freddie Hendrix on trumpet and flugelhorn kicked off the 2026 Sligo Jazz Festival yesterday afternoon at Lillies.
Flamboyantly trousered stout sipping Freddie sporting some great eyewear delivered a first set that featured his own organically styled compositions, including ‘Hard Bop Benny‘ and ‘Barbara’ a dedication to the hard bopper’s wife.
Dedicated to Brownie and lil darlin’ Babs
Other highlights featured ‘Blues for Clifford B,’ a piece written to honour Clifford Brown’s legacy by imagining what he would have sounded like had he lived into the 1960s, and a lilting slow-paced song dedicated to Freddie’s wife, Barbara, that utilised such an unsual three-part horn & woodwind front line, like a capsule, slimmed down glimpse of a fuller sound, like you’d get in a nonet or big band ideally. Tunes often sprouted from a strong triplet feel, rippled with Afro-Cuban rudiments, and weren’t afraid to burst into exuberant refrain built from the ground up riding the roiling rhythmical undertow like surfers jumping for joy heading for a wave that’s like an A-Frame in the foam out there as if the optimum water itself is dreaming for the freedom and wildness of the wide Sargasso sea.
Notable contributions from the ensemble included Stoke man Lockrane switching to piccolo best of all and the pulsating drive of ex-Madeleine Peyroux player Beckett who was never the miserabilist at this feel good showing. But sometimes the trombone lines didn’t quite pan out in the arrangement it seemed in a couple of places I note without really raining on any one’s parade. Freddie is still fine tuning it all, and a quick pencil mark or two added to the drummer’s charts scribbled out made a few small alterations before the punters landed in showed attention to detail and a dedication to mould the material more in his own image through the vehicle of the fine players beside him. Let’s hope some knowing A&R minded soul attached to a top straightahead label has the wit and wherewithal to entice Freddie into the studio to get these sounds out there for a wider Brownie loving audience some day soon.
Track of the Week: AFTER HOURS by Karine Polwart
Here I stand with the fern, the bamboo, the begonia
Karine Polwart
From India, Vietnam and New Caledonia
Spirals and tendrils and rhizomes and roots
A wild inflorescence of strange, strange fruits.
The tree speaks: thinking about all the music that I have listened to this week the song that most stood out was the ballad ‘After Hours’ written by Scottish folk singer Karine Polwart accompanied by her compatriot the jazz pianist Dave Milligan. I listened again to it today. I was also moved by Polwart’s vocal on Robert Burns’ ‘The Silver Tassie’ that appeared alongside ‘After Hours’ on the singer’s recent album Windblown.
Karine Polwart, photo: Reed Ingram Weir
Manchesterism – the jazz angle
Matthew Halsall, Nat Birchall, Mike Walker, Stuart McCallum and more formed a different kind of new order
1950s–1960s
The Trad & Modern Underground
- The Saints Jazz Band and Club 43 establish Manchester’s post-war jazz identity, bringing bebop stars including Sonny Rollins north.
- The BBC Northern Dance Orchestra develops the broadcasting infrastructure that supports the city’s flourishing big-band scene.
1970s–1980s
Band on the Wall & Chamber Jazz
- Band on the Wall becomes one of Britain’s leading touring jazz venues under Steve Morris.
- Pianist John Taylor co-founds Azimuth (ECM), helping define the European chamber-jazz sound.
1990s
Bridging the Club Divide
- Chetham’s-trained Gwilym Simcock studies with John Taylor.
- Matt & Phred’s opens while John Ellis’s Big Band links Manchester’s jazz tradition with the city’s thriving club culture.
2000s–Present
Spiritual Modalism & Global Export
- Matthew Halsall launches Gondwana Records, giving Manchester jazz an international voice.
- GoGo Penguin pioneers breakbeat acoustic jazz while Nat Birchall develops a distinctive spiritual tenor tradition.
There has always been a fierce, headstrong independence to jazz in the North West. Unburdened by the relentless hype machines and commercial posturing of the capital, Manchester has spent seven decades quietly constructing one of the most distinctive, deeply felt jazz ecosystems in Europe. It is a scene defined not by mimicking London trends, but by a singular aesthetic – call it Manchesterism, why not to borrow from politics – where spiritual modalism, acoustic breakbeats, ambient space, and formidable compositional rigor bleed seamlessly into one another.
No seat of learning should be without one,” noted the much missed Evening Standard jazz critic Jack Massarik who was never properly replaced. These days the Standard hardly covers the subject at all and underuses the freelancers it calls on to write once in a blue moon. When Jack was alive he had live reviews in it on a weekly basis. But to be fair Manchester never got much of a look in as Jack used to review London venues mostly and of course the Standard was and is a London paper. But Bill Birch’s limited‑edition hardback Keeper of the Flame: Modern Jazz in Manchester 1946–72 published in 2010 knows where the real centre of the universe is – and of course and very Andily for the zeitgeist today it’s oop north. A richly illustrated, 300‑plus‑page history of postwar modern jazz in the city, it traced the evolution of local clubs, societies and musicians alongside visits from UK and US stars such as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott. Drawing on photographs, maps, flyers, programmes and other ephemera, Birch reconstructed the social geography of Manchester’s bebop and modern‑jazz scene from 1946 through to the early 1970s, positioning the city as a major northern centre parallel to London’s better‑documented story. With a foreword by saxophonist Don Rendell (1926-2015) and a strong focus on venues and promoters, it proved an essential reference point for anyone interested in tha jazz past of Manchester.
To trace this lineage is to understand that Manchester’s modern global footprint wasn’t built overnight. It stretches from the post-war basements of Club 43 and the big-band swing of Syd Lawrence, right through to the acoustic-electronic collisions of GoGo Penguin and the lush street-soul of Secret Night Gang. But at the very heart of the Manchester ethos lies a rare commitment to lyrical depth and harmonic nuance – a trait epitomised by the late, great pianist John Taylor.
Taylor, a self-taught colossus born in the city, helped redefine European chamber jazz alongside Norma Winstone and Kenny Wheeler in Azimuth. He brought an impressionistic, messianic touch to the keys, proving that British jazz could step out from the long shadow of American post-bop and speak with its own poetic, atmospheric voice.
That intellectual and emotional DNA passed directly down the Northern pipeline. Gwilym Simcock, having honed his ears during nine formative years at Chetham’s School of Music, studied directly under Taylor before emerging as one of the most complete pianists of his generation. Whether weaving complex classical counterpoint into solo improvisations (Good Days at Schloss Elmau) or firing off soaring, melodic runs alongside Salford guitar hero Mike Walker in The Impossible Gentlemen, Simcock embodies the Manchester tradition at its peak: staggering technical facility deployed always in service of rain streaked song, space and genuine emotional resonance.
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Randy Ingram, Sound Within, Chill Tone Records ****
Infused in Evansiana pianist Randy Ingram is joined by bassist Rufus Reid and drummer Joe LaBarbera.
I found a Bill Evans record in the bookcase and was listening to it while drying my hair when I realized that it was the record I had played in Naoko’s room on the night of her birthday, the night she cried and I took her in my arms. That had happened only six months earlier, but it felt like something from a much remoter past. Maybe it felt that way because I had thought about it so often – too often, to the point where it had distorted my sense of time.
– Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood (1987)
Re: person we all think we somehow knew
CONTINUOUSLY INSPIRING
Whether plucking a quote from one of the world’s most acclaimed novelists touched by its charms, watching a film inspired by the idiom or hearing well considered repertory work involving classics from its world reprised, the modern jazz piano trio remains one of the most inexhaustible jazz permutations.
Since Bill Evans (1929-1980) as a chief personification of its central flame – and both Reid and La Barbara re: the person in question, they both played with and knew – transformed the role of the pianist within the trio most famously through his landmark collaborations with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian, the emphasis if tempted to be grandiloquent has shifted from hierarchy to conversation, from accompaniment to collective invention.
Oh go on then, why not. And you might say, fine. But there are, a creeping note of well informed if unwelcome undertone of crunching doubt intrudes, lots of Bill Evans themed albums out there. Most of them are, echo that emotion and throw in an even more enthusiastic ditto, absolutely, again, fine. For instance English pianist Paul Edis’ album with Israeli singer Noa Levy this year, reviewed above, injected vocals into the blend and worked beautifully.
There is always room for more. Among the Evans tribute albums I most love is Brazilian pianist and singer Eliane Elias’ Something for You from 2008. Again, like the Edis/Levy approach, that had some vocals plus an Evans connection in the presence of Bass Desires and late period Evans player Marc Johnson and, even, on one track Evans himself.
In the context of Sound Within: A Celebration of Bill Evans, “sound within” ceases to be just a poetic title and becomes something a bit more profound.
Ingram has form with Evans. He even played him in a Swedish film released over a decade ago called Monica Z aka Waltz for Monica about Monica Zetterlund, the singer Evans worked with so luminously.
Inspired by how Evans always played from a deeply honest, emotionally raw core, “sound within” you could claim represents a conscious rejection of superficiality.
That’s not at all a fanciful thought once you dip into Evansiana as it is a realm with its own aura and mystique. It also touched and contributed lots to the mood of Kind of Blue, one of the most beloved jazz albums in history. But it is more than any one album. It is also about looking past the surface level of celebrity, complex harmonic tricks, or branding, and focusing entirely on a space of quiet, unfiltered truth. Of course the irony isn’t lost on me that doing a tribute to a musician is, however you dress it up, a certain kind of para social fixation. And yet there are benefits in that process: the adhesiveness of a glow that somehow clings on to the person paying tribute.
All hail
It is like a halo effect. You can almost hear the “zing” and find yourself making an invisible circle in the air when the act of paying tribute magically works.
Great is Ingram’s faithfulness by interweaving his own contemporary original compositions with Evans classics, Ingram taps into the foundational values of Evans’ aesthetic – honesty, lyricism, and vulnerability – while letting the actual music flow from his own unique perspective.
The “sound within” becomes the silent, collective current flowing between three musicians who are listening just as deeply as they are playing. It is the sound of an honest, unfolding conversation where ego is set aside, allowing a rich, quiet truth to resonate from the inside out.
The Evans connection is made explicit from the opening track, ‘Turn Out the Stars.’
One of Evans’ most enduring compositions, it has long been associated with the pianist’s reflective late-period repertoire, appearing in various interpretations throughout his career.
Ingram approaches it faithfully with an awareness of its history but without reverential weight.
A technical tour de force disguised as a tender ballad, built around a highly sophisticated, 37-bar through-composed structure that rejects standard song forms the tune’s harmonic genius lies in its sheer tonal instability, taking the listener through a rapid sequence of deceptive cadences that cycle through five distinct keys in descending thirds in the first 12 bars alone.
This dense chromaticism is briefly relieved by a lyrical middle section that introduces lush, suspended pedal points, creating a pastoral breath of fresh air before descending back into the complex, dark dominant alterations of the finale.
There are clear echoes here throughout the album of Evans recordings such as Waltz for Debby and Sunday at the Village Vanguard, the classic 1961 Riverside sessions with LaFaro and Motian that established the piano trio as a genuinely democratic ensemble.
Those recordings remain central not simply because of Evans’ harmonic imagination but because of the extraordinary level of interaction between the three musicians. Ingram understands this distinction.
Rufus Reid [now 82] in the clip talking about playing with Bill Evans and Philly Joe Jones
That philosophy is particularly evident on ‘My Foolish Heart,’ a standard forever linked with Evans through the celebrated version on Waltz for Debby and later with Tony Bennett.
The inclusion of ‘Ezz-Thetic’ broadens the historical perspective.
Above, Joe La Barbera [now 78] with Evans and Marc Johnson in Rome in 1979
Associated with the modernist developments of the 1950s and recorded by musicians including Evans recording with its writer George Russell, the composition places Evans’ influence within a wider continuum of post-bop experimentation.
Here Ingram suggests that the Evans legacy was never only about ballad playing or lyrical introspection; it was also about harmonic curiosity and the expansion of what a small ensemble could achieve.
Ingram isn’t reimagining anything. Even his own tunes are faithful to Evans’ style.
Throughout Sound Within, the Alaska born fortysomething Ingram demonstrates a deep understanding of space. The production reinforces this aesthetic.
A record that is very hard to dislike on any significant level.