Distances

Norma Winstone has been at the top of the jazz vocal scene in Great Britain since she was first heard in the company of Rashaan Roland Kirk at Ronnie Scott’s, and later in tandem with British modernists Kenny Wheeler, John Surman, John Taylor and more. With Taylor and Wheeler, she formed the acclaimed trio Azimuth in the late 70s, recording with this trio and as leader herself on ECM. Although often involved in projects with fellow Brits, Winstone also collaborated with Steve Swallow, Gary Burton and Fred Hersch on this side of the Atlantic. Noted British critic Stanley Nicholson, “Norma Winstone is one of the great jazz vocalists not simply because she is so obviously accomplished in what she does, but the sheer range of her singing embraces everything the jazz vocalist can be called upon to do.” What she prefers to do is her own thing as composer, lyricist and explorer of words and sounds without words. “I never thought of it as copying an instrument,” she told Nicholson for Jazz.com. “I thought of it as a sound, which is what it is. Why can’t a voice be used as a texture? I could never see why some people didn’t like the idea of it, it’s a whole interesting world. I like singing words, too, but I don’t see why you’ve always got to sing words.”

Norma Winstone Trio

Two tunes tip their notes toward John Coltrane: Cole Porter’s “Every Time We Say Goodbye” takes its cues from Coltrane’s version on My Favorite Things. Winstone’s voice soars as if acapella with Gesing’s soprano sax adding embellishment but not really comping. These two voices weave in counterpoint, sometimes creating a slightly disturbing dissonant harmony. Venier joins after the third verse, equally abstract, the song moving “from major to minor,” haunting and shimmering.  Inspired by Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” Gesing and Winstone’s “Giant’s Gentle Stride” also features the shifting harmonies of piano and soprano sax, best summarized by Winstone’s lyrics in the final verse: “Inspiration in a sound, what we hear is always true, every thought, every care, every song is a prayer.” 

Norma Winstone ©David Redfern

Two of the most stunning tracks come near the end. The balladic epicenter is Peter Gabriel’s “Here Comes the Flood.”  Venier’s beautiful piano introduces an almost whispering Winstone at her most vulnerable, while Gesing on bass clarinet provides a faint buzziness that resembles cymbal wash in the background. Soon Gesing moves forward with the instrument’s most melodic phrases. Here three musicians work together in wide spaces though on separate paths, only Winstone carrying the melody. After an exquisite duet among Gesing and Venier, Winstone returns to more ornate surroundings. Some years ago, the vocalist wrote poetic lyrics for German pianist Hubert Nuss, but had not previously recorded “Remembering the Start of a Never-Ending Story.” Venier weaves his sparse and harmonically engaging piano around Winstone airy voice, with Gesing swooping gently on soprano.  Gesing’s gorgeous solo soars over Venier like “light upon a stained glass window,” the threesome playing out the final verse as “voices from a time remembered, echoing around this land of lost content.” 

An upbeat finale, “A Song for England” is the trio’s on-the-spot composition built around the lyrics of Andrew Salke from Caribbean Voices II, the three voices melding together in a spirit of spontaneous calypso as Winstone gives the poem the lilt of Jamaica. The distance between tropical sun and West European wind and rain melts away, much as the recording in total warms the coolly introspective “European” sound with echoes of earlier cultures and future collaborations.   

Personally, I look forward to future collaborations among these three musicians. ECM has had a banner year from my perspective, with three of my nominations for the best of 2008—Marilyn Cripsell’s Vignettes, Charles Lloyd’s Rabo de Nube, and Norma Winstone’s Distances. 

This review first posted on www.jazzink.com 

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