Sarah L King’s Debut Album Fire Horse, produced by Claire Martin OBE, is a stunning collection of original songs and standards. Digital and physical release will be on 16 February, with a launch – already sold out – at Pizza Express Jazz Club Soho on Sunday 18 February.
Fire Horse features eight of King’s own compositions, alongside her beautiful arrangements of ‘Devil May Care’, ‘Lush Life’, ‘Stolen Moments’ and ‘Show You The Way To Go’. Accompanied by a stellar – and carefully chosen – group of musicians including Jim Watson on piano and keyboards, Laurence Cottle on electric bass, Jeremy Brown on double bass, Ian Thomas on drums, James McMillan on flugelhorn and Chris Traves on trombone, Sarah’s arrangements also feature backing vocals from Claire Martin OBE and Ian Shaw.
The album was produced by Claire Martin OBE at ECN Music, who says “I love Sarah’s vocal style and songwriting skills. Thought-provoking, tender and sophisticated lyrics set to soulful jazz melodies that are fresh and well crafted. I’m very proud to be involved with her debut album and look forward to more people hearing her music.”
With a background writing film and television scripts, Sarah L King is no stranger to a strong leading line, and says “I’ve often got a title in my head, and the lyrics come after I’ve worked out the chords. I can find my way around the piano and play around with chord progressions, then the words and melody come together usually. The challenge is then fitting the syllables into the melody line, when I start writing out the verses.” King’s eyes light up as she continues: “It’s the same way of putting together a song every time. It always feels like time well spent. It’s the hardest time to secure for yourself, that time, but when you do it, it’s the most satisfying thing. Songs are like time capsules. They represent to everyone a moment in their life, a chapter in their life.”
“I got in touch with Claire Martin following a social media post about ECN music. I had written nearly all of the songs for the album by then – eight or nine. I emailed Claire and she responded really fast. It was as simple as that. I greatly admire her; she is very astute. I’ve learned a lot from her – she’s great fun, and I love how she uses her time management. If it doesn’t happen now, it won’t happen. It was a very business-like way that I met Claire – I had fully forged demos… The arrangements I had in place, the general structures, even with the covers, I knew what I wanted, a solo here, a solo there, but of course the musicality, the beautiful playing of the solos was down to the fantastic musicians. With Claire, we talked about what would work for the album; the album is a bit of a hybrid. It’s not a conventional jazz standards album.” With this in mind, musicians were selected and bass player Laurence Cottle was brought on board for the more soul/funk numbers.
Having spent the majority of her career to date writing for films and television, Sarah L King began composing songs during the pandemic. “I’m always trying to write jazz and I fail miserably. For me, the beautiful jazz standards, you can’t touch those, they’re a very straightforward AABA structure, and I adore them. Every time I try to write a song that’s echoing a jazz standard I suddenly find I can hear a chorus – but that’s not jazz. A lot of jazz standards don’t have a chorus as such – they call the song a chorus. So I keep writing myself into a more catchy framework, and you can’t take that out of yourself, it’s just kind of there. It’s shaped my work as more of a jazz – singer-songwriter hybrid genre.”
And the songs are catchy, indeed. You can hear King’s influences growing up, from Stevie Wonder to Karen Carpenter, with echoes of the great jazz divas Nina Simone and Billie Holiday thrown in. “For me, when I was writing film scripts, the most important thing was the title and the log line. If you had a brilliant title, you’ve got the film in your mind already. For example, everyone knows Jaws. But then when they wrote Alien, the log line they wrote was “jaws in space”. Which I thought was just fantastic. Because in three words, you kind of get what that film is going to be about.”
With twelve songs on the album, I asked Sarah L King for some highlights. “‘Snowblind’ is probably my ultimate favourite on the album. It’s a simple track which I didn’t want to mess with. We agreed to go with the beautiful grand piano and vocals. It’s a song of loneliness and simplicity… I just wrote it down in a notebook: ‘Snowblind.’ What a beautiful image. Write down things that matter to you. You never know when it comes in useful and it helps to understand yourself.”
The track ‘Born Yesterday’ has a slight gospel feel to it. It’s more humorous than it comes across; I love the phrase ‘born yesterday.’ It’s a really silly phrase, and I love just messing around with that in a song… Songs take on a life of their own, you have to just go with them as they come out… ‘Black Dog’ is a groove-led piece of music. I had the phrase ‘Black Dog’ in my mind to do with depression, but I wanted to write something funny, upbeat, not taboo. Let’s take the taboo out of it and write a song that’s like, ‘yeah ok, we all have these black days, so what? They come and they go. Let’s dance to it!’ It was great fun making ‘Black Dog’ as well, we all had a chance to step out of the box a bit.”
“The title Fire Horse came about from the Chinese Horoscope. The Horse represents the Year of the Horse and Fire is the element associated with that year. Apparently Fire Horses come around once every 60 years and are seen as highly contentious – legend has it Fire Horse women were likely to murder their husbands! In short, to me, Fire Horse represents a passion, a fire in the belly. I do feel like quite a wild spirit sometimes and this name perfectly represents me.”
Having come from a musical background, with a father who was a jazz trumpet player and a grandmother who was a conductor, Sarah L King grew up in an environment of musical exploration, which is demonstrated in her innate ability to craft a song. Whilst the passion for singing was ever-present, Sarah King was kept busy doing film work for much of her career. When she began singing with gospel and soul choirs around 2017, she was encouraged by esteemed choir leader and musical director Mike King to write her own material.
King formed her first band in 2019 just before the pandemic: “I had a residency in Walker Briggs Bar in Crystal Palace every Sunday lunchtime where I really cut my teeth as a bandleader. Then Covid hit, but that’s when I made connections with new musicians & took off in a new direction of original work.”
Sarah L King’s sold-out album launch is coming up at Pizza Express Jazz Club Soho on Sunday, 18th of February, and will feature the same lineup as the recording plus Luke Tomlinson drums, with Claire Martin and Ian Shaw on BVs. “This is a dream event for me,” King says. She is also looking forward to a gig at Piano Smithfield with this material on 19th April, for those who haven’t already snapped up the tickets for the February show.
Fire Horse is released on Peccadillo in collaboration with ECN Music.
