This is a fully-formed album of rich imagination and variety that draws upon the full range of her excellent Jazz Orchestra
Obledob records: 001
Olivia Murphy (conductor); Becca Wilkins & Rebecka Edlund (vocals); Ruta Sipola (flute); Lewis Sallows (alto saxophone, soprano saxophone, clarinet); George Garford (alto saxophone, flute); Jonathan Chung (tenor saxophone); Alicia Gardener-Trejo (baritone saxophone, bass clarinet, bass flute); Tom Syson, Alex Astbury & Charlotte Keeffe (trumpets); Dave Sear, Joel Knee & Olivia Hughes (trombones); Hanna Mbuya (tuba); Daniel Kemshell (guitar); Olly Chalk (piano); Aram Bahmaie (double bass); Kai Chareunsy (drums); Chris Hyson (synth, track 5)
Recorded at Livingston Studios, London on 14/15 October 2024
You can be forgiven for perhaps not having heard of Olivia Murphy before. After all ‘Fateful Birds & Fledgling Stories’ is her debut studio album. But it is certain that once heard, you are not likely to forget her soon, because Murphy is the real deal: a young and contemporary big band composer and arranger who makes you forget you are listening to a big band until she wants you to remember, something she does skilfully and judiciously, all in service to her highly original and complex compositions. For this is a fully-formed album of rich imagination and variety that draws upon the full range of her excellent Jazz Orchestra, both individually and collectively, and impresses in its confidence and artistic musicality.
After winning the Peter Whittingham Jazz Development Award in 2021, Murphy has not hung about. She has since established her Jazz Orchestra; received various commissions, including from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Merton Music Foundation, Sonorite Saxophone Quartet and University of Birmingham; delivered performances at venues such as the Vortex, Birmingham Symphony Hall and Cheltenham Jazz Festival; and recorded this album with support from the Help Musicians’ Next Level Award. She has since premiered two new suites for large ensembles which she hopes to record with the Orchestra and was appointed Resident Musical Director of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra in 2025.
‘Fateful Birds & Fledgling Stories’, says Murphy, “is all about transformation, and through pure coincidence a lot of these stories of change ended up involving birds” drawing upon inspirations ranging from Greek mythology to the classic novel ‘Little Women’. And she has pulled together an impressive 18-piece orchestra to deliver her singular vision, not afraid to explore the range of opportunities offered by such resources, from small groupings to engaging the full ensemble. Murphy’s use of wordless vocals is particularly striking, applied both to heighten emotion and to variously mimic bird calls, warblings and chatterings which run through a number of the pieces and bind the work as a whole.
From the opening notes, you know that this is not your usual big band album. Stifled blowings coupled with complex vocalised bird calls open ‘Calliope and the Magpies’, inspired by the Greek Muse of epic poetry who is said to have transformed nine sisters into magpies for their insolence. ‘Indifferent Stars’ has a wider blues themed layered sound, rippling notes that tug at your consciousness and swirl into a tangible mass.
Vocals charged with emotion and drama relate the cautionary tale of ‘Honey Thieves’; a two-part piece inspired by another Greek myth, where the theft of honey is punished by transformation of the thieves into the form of a birds, a process mirrored by a shifting vocabulary from spoken word to more erratically charged avian voicings. ‘Part two’ picks out a driving rhythm and for the first time reveals the full weight and sound of the Orchestra; all the more impressive for being withheld until this point.
The four-piece ‘Sister Suite’ draws on a passage from Louisa May Alcott’s ‘Little Women’ where Beth compares her sisters and herself to different birds, and results in distinct movements of differing character and mood. The first, ‘The Lark She Writes About’, provides ascending voicings over pulsed orchestral textures giving way to piano and sax solos that cut through. ‘Turtle Dove’ is a quieter movement with a relaxed bluesy theme opened up and developed on trombone. ’The Gull’ brings circling piano phrasing over sounding textures that build. The fourth movement, ‘Grey-coated Sand Bird’, opens with beautiful wordless vocals and, with the full band coming into play, builds a strong theme.
The album concludes with a delightful arrangement of Johnny Mandel’s and Dave Frishberg’s very moving ‘You Are There’. There are some beautiful vocals and orchestral moments on this piece, which is a song clearly loved by Murphy and most probably by you too after hearing it.
Murphy has here produced an album of artistic boldness, delivered with purpose and vision. The work feels like a cohesive suite, thoughtfully programmed that needs to be listened to as a whole. Not “fledgling” at all, but a fully-fledged project that begs the question “what next?” Recommended.
