Another album to add to and thus update *yet again* the best UK releases of 2026 parlour game of a list. (I typed “parlous” there instead for a moment, oops, fat fingeredly.) The only thing parlous about the strength of the UK jazz out there is the neglect it habitually receives from the mainstream music industry. But that’s another story and I am preaching to the converted – dear jazz blog reader, niche genre consumer.
I enjoyed Momentism a good deal. The title undersells it a bit and yet is a confident declaration. A feast of riches this year on the jazz piano front 2026 has proved (the year is nearly over – most releases dry up in mid-November and the major ones are nearly all out), I liked it even more than Julian Joseph’s Voyage of the Faithful, Paul Edis and Noa Levy’s Evansian explorations and even Zoe Rahman’s to Hull and back live album.
But look these lists aren’t exactly facts, are they, just a listener user guide when few such frequently updated view points exist in a welter of hucksterism, bizarre marketing and client journalism elsewhere. However, without being at all hairshirt Uriah Heep-like about it glance again kind flâneur at the list and you’ll note that Momentism – however you accent it, I prefer the emphasis heavy on the first syllable, more is mo, as it were – the highest placed album led by a UK pianist. So, pretty decent, huh, fair play and richly deserved.
Jazz is a pastness kind of music on one level for the language, unless you want to be surface and think that anything created before breakfast is old hat and a present kind of music on another for the instinct and creative flair that is largely absent if you are a plodder and know about 1 and a half chords massacred regularly on a half tuned uke.
The only name I managed to pluck from the air who Safir sounds like a bit occurred to me on ‘The World in the Evening’ when thoughts of Barry Green intruded. Green did a very good album with Ian Shaw and Tony Kofi called An Adventurous Dream exploring Strayhorn and Ellington – and there is a Strayhorn homage in the nomenclature on one key track in all serendipity here. In other words he has integrated his influences into his own sound mostly as generally speaking you can’t pin his sound to anyone directly much and bang on about being “esque” or in the vein of even in a non barking way.
One, then to explain why I haven’t curbed my enthusiasm, in the reasoning for being positive, skill. 2. taste 3. a playing togetherness (that’s to do with the band thing) 4. command of the acoustic jazz language 5. ear for a tune 6. looseness where necessary (so there is flow) 7. a discipline in creating an arc to the tunes 8. wit – “beard” tune ‘Hirsute Pursuit’ is a good example as is the nod to a staircase drat-ness – thinking of the perfect witty comeback or reply only after the moment has passed elsewhere 9. tenderness ‘Black Star Sapphire for Strayhorn’ 10. joy (found especially in the crazed shuffling that dominates ‘Clocker’ smuggling in a fast samba of a beat) are the reasons I like it.
Safir, 34, who hails from Manchester, a handy place to be from these days even if long since exiled not even under Andily to London, composed ten of the 11 tracks on the album, ‘Boulevardier’, ‘Zacharius’, ‘Hirsute Pursuit’, ‘Duke Balington’, ‘Black Star Sapphire’, ‘Clocker’, ‘The World In The Evening’, ‘Mad Sad Bad’, and ‘Espirit D’Escalier.’ The meekly affecting title track like a lovely slice of Viennoiserie itself is a trio setting so the album operates a little even in pared back form. They all sit well together. Nothing jars. The remaining track, ‘Amethyst’, was co-written with vocalist Emma Smith. Read a review of Smith and Safir in 2021 when the pair played Soho club Crazy Coqs.
Momentism is shaped around a quartet and has Conor Chaplin on double bass (best heard in a bit of isolation on ‘Black Star Sapphire’) and Luke Tomlinson fairly unobtrusively but tastefully enough in an Ianto (Ian Thomas) kind of style on drums. Conor, a reformed punk jazzer circa early World Service Project when he played bass guitar in recent years has worked extensively with Norwegian new generation sax eminence Marius Neset.
Loose Tubes icon Ballamy, 62, continues a musical partnership with Safir that dates back to 2018. The influential Somerset based tenorist’s first volume of Riversphere issued last year by Oliver Weindling’s reborn Babel label was one of 2025’s very best albums – it has just been nominated for a Parliamentary Jazz Award. For once common sense among the geniuses who decide these things (and the parliamentarians who vote on them) prevails.
Momentism surely a candidate for future award recognition too was recorded in just a single day at Master Chord Studio in Finchley in February. It’s an excellent record. I miss the presence of Ian Shaw that’s the only thing. Let’s hope Safir, Ballamy and Shaw do another record next in the pipeline. But is this as good as What’s New? even without the St. Asaph syncopator? Actually I think it is. Ballamy’s soloing on ‘Zacharius’ makes me think fondly of his masterpiece All Men, Amen (B&W, 1995), an album that is as rare as hen’s teeth and not as far as I know available on any format alas and alack. Lost? That essential sound is found coaxed out by Safir’s writing and in bud once again.
- Hear Safir at Ronnie Scott’s on Monday 14 September.