A void was left with the departure of the great Kenny Wheeler (1930-2014), who gave voice, on trumpet and flugelhorn, to a body of original compositions unlike any other in the modern jazz lexicon. Two contrasting albums shed new light on Wheeler’s legacy, and interestingly, both tilt toward the large-ensemble aspect of Wheeler’s world.
Some Days Are Better: The Lost Scores (Greenleaf Music) was up for a Grammy it did not take home in early February. It’s an expansive and brilliantly executed set by the massed forces of the Kenny Wheeler Legacy project, featuring the Royal Academy of Music Jazz Orchestra and the University of Miami’s Frost Jazz Orchestra, directed respectively by Nick Smart and John Daversa.
Just a year after the January 2025 release of Some Days Are Better comes another inspired yet wholly different program, Vital Spark: Music of Kenny Wheeler (Edition Records), featuring bassist Dave Holland, vocalist Norma Winstone and a small group supplemented by the 25 choral singers of the London Vocal Project, directed by Pete Churchill.
While both albums feature London-based ensembles — Holland and Winstone are English, Wheeler was Canadian residing in the UK — Vital Spark highlights pieces from the trumpeter’s final years, while Some Days focuses on Wheeler’s lesser-known early work.
Common Origins and Bonds
Holland and Winstone went back to the beginning with Wheeler, to the trumpeter’s first albums Windmill Tilter (Fontana, 1969, with Holland and the John Dankworth Band) and Song for Someone (Incus, 1973, with Winstone). The vocalist also worked with Wheeler on the landmark Music for Small and Large Ensembles (ECM, 1990).
Holland played on all of Wheeler’s most revered records on ECM, from Gnu High (1975) up through the exquisite Angel Song with Lee Konitz and Bill Frisell (1997), not to mention the quartet date What Now? with Chris Potter and pianist John Taylor (CAM Jazz, 2006). (Taylor, who died in 2015 at 72, richly deserves an article of his own.)
Holland also had Wheeler with Steve Coleman and Julian Priester/Robin Eubanks in the frontline of his ’80s quintet, with a fine trilogy of ECM albums to show for it.
Holland and Winstone, in other words, bring virtuosity and technical depth but also firmly grounded love to these late-career gems of Wheeler’s on Vital Spark, joined by pianist Nikki Isles, tenor/soprano saxophonist Mark Lockheart, guitarist John Parricelli and drummer James Maddren.
The choir of Vital Spark is not an add-on; it’s a strong, attention-grabbing, beautifully integrated element throughout. Churchill and these highly qualified singers capture not just the music’s darkly glowing harmonic warmth but also its expressive rhythmic drive at the right moments, laying down backgrounds and pads not unlike a big band on the title track and elsewhere. On “Will You Walk a Little Faster” they remind me of the Double Six of Paris singing “Tin Tin Deo” with Dizzy Gillespie. The rich ballad sonorities of “Jazzonia” are also something I’ll want to return to.
Winstone and the choir are singing either Winstone’s lyrics or Wheeler’s own settings of poems by the likes of William Blake and Lewis Carroll. It’s fun sometimes to not know which is which.
A Soloists’ Feast
Winstone also makes two appearances on Some Days Are Better, on the “Some Days Are Better Suite” (with fellow longtime Wheeler associate Evan Parker) and singing her own lyrics to “Sweet Yakity Waltz” with Chris Potter, alto saxophonist Donovan Haffner and pianist Scottie Thompson.
This is more of a spang-a-lang jazz date — there’s a bit more adrenaline, more of a Jones-Lewis grit to the affair, with trumpeter Ingrid Jensen slaying on the famous “Smatter” (from Gnu High) to lead it off.
The players dig in and devour it all, including pianist Shelly Berg on “Dallab” and project co-leader Nick Smart himself on flugelhorn (along with Etienne Charles, Brian Lynch and James Copus, plus Daversa on trumpet). For a treat, head straight to Mr. Charles and tenor saxophonist Emma Rawicz squaring off with fine solos on “Some Doors are Better Open.”
Pianists Scottie Thompson and Josh Beck both double on Rhodes, adding another funky mysterious layer to these charged and complex, newly dusted-off Wheeler charts, heard only long ago on BBC radio broadcasts.
Smart and Brian Shaw also co-authored a book, Song for Someone: The Musical Life of Kenny Wheeler, out last year from Equinox. It would have been smart of us to publish an excerpt. But book or no book, with Some Days and now Holland and Winstone’s Vital Spark, we are all more thoroughly versed in Wheeler’s wonders. JT