Norma Winstone's Timeless Broadcast Finally Released
A long-archived 1990 radio broadcast featuring the peerless English vocalist and lyricist Norma Winstone with Hanover's NDR Radio Orchestra has been released as A Timeless Place. The album captures Winstone at her very best, demonstrating the soft power that has defined her 60-year career.
Emotive Lyricism and Surefooted Improvisation
The title track is Winstone's much-covered lyric to pianist Jimmy Rowles' tune The Peacocks, previously explored by Mark Murphy, Jazzmeia Horn, and Cécile McLorin Salvant. Her lyrics evoke glimpsed happiness and missed chances, with lines like "I'm drowning now, slowly sinking in a sea of blue and green." Her lustrous low sounds and vaulting octave leaps constantly mutate the implications of words.
Winstone's surefooted improv skill guides her wordless variations on guitarist Ralph Towner's skittish The Glide. She mischievously curveballs her sardonic lyric to Steve Swallow's Ladies in Mercedes. An exquisite account of I Loves You, Porgy distils the song's confusion of resignation and hope, as she also does on Kenny Wheeler's Sea Lady.
Enduring Spirit Captured in Fine Session
"I've always been on the edge, always felt like I was swimming against the tide and somehow couldn't stop," Winstone once said. This fine session, enhanced by her friend and collaborator Steve Gray's arrangements for an A-list band, catches that spirit. It still endures in Winstone's work today.
Also Out This Month
Sangam & Friends (Blue Note) vivaciously joins recordings from a 2009 Mumbai concert by tabla master Zakir Hussain, saxophonist Charles Lloyd, and drummer Eric Harland with a contemporary version of their Sangam Trio. Dry-toned tenor lines and feathery flute musings cruise over racing tabla percussion, while Vijay Prakash's soaring voice enhances an enchanting east-west exchange.
Richard Spaven, a UK percussion peer to beat-stretching US jazz/hip-hop virtuosi, shows his wider creativity with Light of Day (Edition), mingling jazz, avant-funk, Celtic inflections, and bluesy guitar with classy guests including trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær.
Tal Mashiach, a young Israeli virtuoso guitarist and bassist, fuses Brazilian, Israeli, and Greek music with songlike composing skill on the captivating Who's Around? (Anzic).
