Emerging from a rare but, as it turned out, essential performance by Quercus at King’s Place about ten days ago, I found myself once more deeply in thrall of June Tabor’s commanding voice, Huw Warren’s grandiloquent piano weave and, inevitably, Iain Ballamy’s magnificently mellifluous tenor tones. So I couldn’t avoid snapping up a copy of the latter’s new CD.
And those impeccable tones, heralded by Rob Luft’s gently skittering harmonics, open the album with a statement group-improvisation, the aptly-named Harmonique. It’s a statement of intent, as Iain’s liner notes speak of working with five musicians over five years to produce “five improvisations created to sound as if composed and five compositions created to sound as if they were improvised”; and this, along with One For All is played by Iain’s core team of Rob, Conor Chaplin and Corrie Dick plus guests Laura Jurd and Charlie Ballamy.
This track certainly sounds more composed, opening with Conor’s pulsing bass-line, but the layers of confidently shared lines create a very ECM-like “hornsphere”. Having seen Charlie & Laura blowing on more conventional numbers with Iain at his regular fortnightly jam in Frome’s Bar Lotte I wasn’t surprised at the degree of interplay, nor technical prowess they produce here, though I still marvel at these in players so young. Corrie’s elegantly spare yet sonorous drumming here, and on Unresolved is notable too.
Among the five compositions are a couple of Jobim’s: Retrato em Branco e Preto (Zingaro) stands out with Iain’s retelling of the hook and Rob’s reverberant long tones so much more questioning than Getz’s standard. Sharing similar ground is a version of Bill Frisell’s Strange Meeting where the main melody on sax fleetingly recalls an element of Leon Russell’s This Masquerade… The tradition is thus never far away, with Iain’s own Green In Blue deftly conjuring its Kind Of Blue precursor, though his sound here is maybe more Shorter than Coltrane. Either way, it feels like a deeply-felt personal statement, a gentle tour-de-force, as is the whole album. It certainly fulfills the ambition of exploring the relationship of, and the blurred lines between improvisation and composition. Rob contributes his inimitable full-breadth demonstration of what a guitar sound can stretch to, not least in Lost Souls and in the magisterial theme of his own composition As Time Passes, which closes and truly resolves the album water-ways.
Musicians as tributaries to the group’s river, seeking a “a shared flow state” – the river-flowing metaphors that Iain describes in his notes really do exemplify the work of this sextet of highly-skilled, pleasingly thoughtful players. The Quercus gig reminded me that it was still quite a thing to hear a folk-jazz collaboration back at their inception15 years ago. It’s now a ubiquitous strand of British jazz, with the work of people like Fergus McCreadie and Laura Jurd’s latest solo work (ALBUM REVIEW) and one that indirectly informs Riversphere; a kind of nu-pastorale.
And, oh…that tone…! I look forward to Vol.2, hopefully in less than five years time.
Riversphere Vol.1 is released today 2 November 2025
Personnel:
Iain Ballamy – saxophone, composer
Rob Luft -guitar
Conor Chaplin – bass
Corrie Dick – drums
Special Guests: Laura Jurd
And introducing Charlie Ballamy, trumpets
Track Listing:
Harmonique (Ensemble)
Unresolved (Ballamy/Luft/Chaplin/Dick)
Chimerical (Ballamy/Luft/Chaplin/Dick)
Strange Meeting (Bill Frisell)
One for All (Ensemble)
Retrato em Branco e Preto (Jobim/Buarque)
Green in Blue (Ballamy)
Lost Souls (Ballamy/Luft/Chaplin/Dick)
Olha Maria (Jobim/Buarke/Moraes)
As Time Passes (Luft)
Recorded by Sebastian Brice at Indefra studios, Frome and Mike Mower at Mower’s studio, Beckington
Mixed and mastered by Sebastian Brice
Produced by Iain Ballamy
Executive producers Oliver Weindling and Dan Messore
Artwork design and photography Dave McKean
