Vital Spark is a 2026 album celebrating the music of Kenny Wheeler, featuring Dave Holland, Norma Winstone and the London Vocal Project on Edition Records.

Who performs on Vital Spark?

The album features Dave Holland, Norma Winstone, London Vocal Project, Mark Lockheart, John Parricelli, Nikki Iles and James Maddren.

What label released Vital Spark?

Vital Spark was released by Edition Records in 2026.

Dave Holland, Norma Winstone, London Vocal Project, Vital Spark (Music of Kenny Wheeler), Edition ****

Stephen Graham

3 months ago

The flood of Kenny Wheeler related releases -“Straws in the wind blown this way and that (Norma Winstone)” – is entirely appropriate: there’s so much to his world to trust

			
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Perhaps you are seeking solace and something of a palliative against ennui. You don’t have to be. But it’s more than a salve (more like spiritual salvation delivered in secular terms instead) achieved by turning to Vital Spark and the soothing choral responses on ‘Inner Traces’ that eases you in.

Before you listen I suggest familarising – or refamiliarising yourself – with the London Vocal Project’s buoyant work with Wheeler and Winstone on 2013’s Mirrors which is a clear antecedent although bass icon the Wolverhampton wanderer Bitches Brew legend Dave Holland wasn’t involved with it. He makes all the difference. Regular readers of marlbank will also know that Holland was also key on Anouar Brahem’s elegiac Gaza homage ‘After the Last Sky’ which was our track of the year in 2025.

And Vital Spark also includes some of the Loose Tubes and Polar Bear’s tenorist Mark Lockheart’s best soloing in years.

Joining the dots a bit more to explore some further invisible threads, Holland – who turns 80 later this autumn – and Wheeler (1930-2014) worked extensively together as did the other main icon involved in this recording Norma Winstone whose utterly aesthetic work with Wheeler goes back – and possibly even further – at least to 1973’s now rare as hen’s teeth Incus collector’s item, Song for Someone.

Gnu High is the key work of Holland and Wheeler’s to listen to. It was recorded with Keith Jarrett and Jack De Johnette (who died just last year) and was issued in 1976.

Vital Spark juggles the often incompatible demands of instrumentalists and singers to create a parity of esteem and is also a very literary work. The best bits I think are the settings of Stevie Smith and William Blake.

The tracks which were issued prior to full release were perhaps the more positive, sunnier side of the album (eg ‘Jazzonia’ and the delightful treatment of Lewis Carroll’s the Mock Turtle’s Song – ‘Will You Walk a Little Faster?’) and very good they are too. But being a melancholic soul and miserabalist at heart myself I was fascinated having heard these some weeks ago to hear the rest over the last day or so since full release, amounting to the darker side of the album – and it is even more rewarding.

‘Infant Joy,’ a setting of the William Blake poem from 1789’s Songs of Innocence is the most significant part of the album I feel.

It proves bleak yet humane in its stark poignancy and the Norma Winstone vocal gives it a clarity of execution. The text is brief, vulnerable and profound:

“I have no name

I am but two days old.—

What shall I call thee?

I happy am

Joy is my name,—

Sweet joy befall thee!

Pretty joy!

Sweet joy but two days old,

Sweet joy I call thee;

Thou dost smile.

I sing the while

Sweet joy befall thee. “

– William Blake

Holland’s introduction is beautiful, a tender narrative, matched by the incantatory vocals of Winstone and the deftly arranged choir and a choice solo by guitarist John Parricelli.

As ever given the longevity of her career thoughts from past work leap to mind and I think of Winstone’s collaborations with pianist Michael Garrick and some 1970s sessions and in particular a song called ‘Return of an Angel’ only relatively recently released on an album called Late Autumn Sunshine. You get the shared sense of pastoralism and a melding of sensibilities that spans literature and music.

A few brief notes on some of the other tracks to wrap up this review.

The title track lyrics aren’t credited – perhaps they are Winstone’s I’m not sure. It’s a tribute to Wheeler about the music living on. I also thought (because of the opening “Vital spark of heav’nly flame” phrase) of the different, unrelated, words of Alexander Pope’s ‘The Dying Christian to his Soul’ (1712) particularly the passage in the final verse given the sheer joy of the song:

“my ears
With sounds seraphic ring!
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!”

‘These are the Things We Trust’ is also known as ‘Things We Trust’.

Norma Winstone, Wheeler With Words, amm *****

It was on 2024 release Wheeler With Words, a collaboration Norma did with a Scandi outfit called The North which is among the best of the happy spill of Wheeler related work of late. And certainly WWW is up there with the Grammy nominated big band masterpiece Some Days Are Better out last year.

Norma wrote the words to Kenny’s tune. The English literary writer most attuned to Winstone’s approach interpreted here I think is clearly Stevie Smith whose classic ‘Not Waving But Drowning’ is one further highlight. Smith was an utterly unique writer as of course is Winstone whose work as a lyricist is just as important as her influential singing voice. It manifests itself most elsewhere on her acclaimed setting of Jimmy Rowles’ ‘The Peacocks’ known as ‘A Timeless Place.’ She is very observant and places ordinary details against sublimated emotion and transforms the feeling entirely. Thus on that song the ordinariness of windows looking out onto a never ending pattern of flowers and trees is revealed through the sunlight as such unexpected creatures as peacocks framed by quiet inflection and unexcitable enunciation emerge.

Read a 2014 interview with Norma Winstone run on marlbank

The ‘Things We Trust’ lyric is also a great example of her approach, the lyrics speak of looking back down a long winding track that climbs from a lonely sea.

This album posited through “memories’ mists” all the way back to her work with Wheeler and John Taylor in Azymuth in particular “lives forever and forever.” The haunting sounds of Wheeler filled her life and made their mark on her. Rewinding to recall in such company is so worthwhile we as listeners can only marvel at and soak up the sensations tapped into by all.