Kenny Wheeler

Six For Six

(Cam. Jazz Camj7866-2)

A colloquy of veterans here, a palaver of experience and musical beauty by lifeworn artists expressing decades of jazz discovery.

And led by a trumpeter born in Toronto who has spent a life making music in England since his arrival in London as a young man in 1952, who blew with swing pioneers like Buddy Featherstonehaugh, bop-influenced jazzmen like John Dankworth and early free improvisers like John Stevens and the Spontaneous Music Ensemble.

A long jazz lifetime has taken him through the Azimuth trio with John Taylor and Norma Winstone, the Anthony Braxton Quartet (1971-76) and the Globe Unity Orchestra among thousands of other diverse jazz formations.

A Glaswegian, Bobby Wellins, born in 1936, a tenor saxophonist of a host of quartets, most notably that of Stan Tracey, and a Londoner, Stan Sulzmann, born in 1948 and a veteran tenorist and soprano saxophonist of the Gil Evans Orchestra, the Hamburg-based NDR Band and the stomping Kenny Clarke/Francy Boldand Big Band, are the sextet's other two horns.

Manchester-born John Taylor, an ex-confrere of Ronnie Scott, Jan Garbarek, Enrico Rava and Lee Konitz, is the pianist.

The drummer, big band specialist Martin France, born in Rainham, Kent, in 1964 started at the age of 12 backing crooners in working men's clubs, played with great jazz figures like Evan Parker and Wheeler and became principal percussionist with the Halle Orchestra and the London Sinfonia, while bassist Chris Laurence, another Londoner, was drummer Tony Oxley's long-time bassist and has made a series of momentous albums with baritonist John Surman.

Together they are a true amalgam of British - and Canadian - jazz genius at the apex of their musicianship, and this album is their combined testimony, led by an ever-excellent and ever-young 83-year-old.

France's resonating tympanic solo announces the opener Seven, Eight, Nine (Part 1) before Wheeler and the two saxophones begin a call-and-response sequence.

Wheeler shines through his solo, Wellins's tenor sings over France's thrashing drums and Sulzmann brings in his soprano, gyrating through his horn story with clarity and relish.

Canter N6 begins with Wellins's gurgling tenor over Laurence's delving notes, making the beginnings of ever-forming, curling melodies which grow like ballads of pure surprise.

Wheeler's trumpet peals and suddenly touches the skies.

The Long Waiting was written for Wheeler's big band in which Laurence, France and Sulzmann are regular members.

It begins with some beautiful duo sounds between Taylor and Sulzmann before Wheeler's brass chorus sails through the Ludwigsburg studio, searching high reaches but kept close to the Earth by Taylor's comradeship.

When the pianist moves into his own solo outing it is as if he is marking out the trail for his bandmates, who follow him and Wheeler resolutely into Four, Five, Six with the brother saxophones in full exchange and sharing messages and the juice pouring from these virtuosi horns as if they are squeezing their lifetimes to tell us everything, all the way from a Glasgow boyhood to another in Harold Hill, the huge Essex estate where Sulzmann grew up as a young post-war rehoused Londoner.

As for Wheeler, his own long transatlantic jazz life pours out in Ballad No 130, the serenity of its melody scooping up the reeds too and Taylor's reflective chords.

Sulzmann's soprano sings like a homecoming bird.

The second part of Seven, Eight, Nine follows, with Wellins's tenor spinning on its own sonic axis and France's rattling snares behind him.

Taylor voyages out full of fire and exploration, his keys ever-searching, and Wheeler's soaring solo has the contrariness of strength and fragility in every note.

Then there comes The Imminent Immigrant, and whether this is Wheeler's autobiographical tale, an act of musical empathy with east London neighbours or perhaps both, which edges the listener's imagination onward.

His solo is one of a fiery beauty and inspires Taylor's pianism to reach a rare plane of emotive complexity, setting off Sulzmann's soprano rhapsody.

Then back to Wheeler's delicacy and finally a concluding ensemble for the wisest musicians.

The last track, Upwards, begins with Wheeler and his old piano partner Taylor inside each other's notes and successively each member adds their timbral witness.

France and Laurence's brotherly pulse beds down the unified sound, and as a listener you come out of this hour's recorded music earnestly thanking and blessing your ears, as well as such superb and seasoned musicians.