My review of Kenny Wheeler's Songs for Quintet, today at All About Jazz.
With the passing of Kenneth Vincent John Wheeler—Kenny Wheeler to his legion of friends and fans—the world lost yet another significant figure in the history of jazz from the mid-'60s through to the second decade of the new millennium, the artist that Norma Winstone (more often than not his singer of choice) called "the Duke Ellington of our times." While Wheeler had, since 2004, been releasing his music on the Italian Cam Jazz label, but it seems wholly appropriate that his final album— recorded in December, 2013, just nine months prior to his passing at the age of 84—has been issued on Munich's award-winning ECM Records.
Wheeler had released a number of fine albums prior to coming to the label in the mid-'70s (including his first, the recently reissued 1969 Fontana classic Windmill Tilter), but it was with ECM that he truly honed his skills as a composer and bandleader (his unparalleled acumen on both trumpet and flugelhorn already finely developed), first as a member of the groundbreaking Azimuth trio, with Winstone and keyboardist John Taylor, but subsequently as a leader in his own right with a stellar run of albums ranging from 1976's Gnu High, 1977's Deer Wan and 1980's Around Six to 1984's Double, Double You, 1990's Music for Large & Small Ensembles and 1997's Angel Song.
With Songs for Quintet, plenty has changed...but plenty has also remained the same. The quintet Wheeler has chosen for the December, 2013 date recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London—the infirmed Wheeler likely unable to travel much further to record in any of the studios usually chosen by ECM founder/producer Manfred Eicher and Steve Lake (who, uncharacteristically, are credited as co-producers)—is a set of friends, all of whom he's been recording with for decades with the exception of drummer Martin France. Still, France is no stranger to Wheeler and the trumpeter's circles, having been a member of John Taylor's trio since 2005 and appearing on the trumpeter's last two Cam Jazz recordings (2012's large ensemble The Long Waiting (2012) and 2013's appropriately titled sextet date Six For Six). France will also be no stranger to longtime label followers for his work in the unfairly overlooked group First House on 1985's Eréndira and 1989's Cantilena.
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Originally Posted by jkelman
(joking i assume?)
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