Highly recommended!

Stoney Lane Records SLR1885

Sara Colman – Vocals; Rebecca Nash – Piano
with
Iain Ballamy – Tenor Saxophone (Noble Heart & Gardener); Percy Pursglove – Flugelhorn (Ribbons); Trish Clowes – Tenor Saxophone (Little Light); Steve Banks – Guitar (Sophie’s Song); Ruth Hammond – Bass Clarinet (Night Traveller); Henrik Jensen – Double Bass; Jonathan Silk – Drums
Recorded at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire between 2021 and 2024.

In an album that is difficult to catagorise, Sara Colman and Rebecca Nash draw on their collective influences that reach across musical genres and take in the work of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, Joni Mitchell, John Taylor and Norma Winstone.

While the pair’s musical association stretches back a decade or more, the germ of this project was planted during the pandemic and in 2020 as the writing partnership took hold. A project that Colman and Nash couldn’t, and shouldn’t, be rushed the music evolved over a four year period and the time spent has been fully justified in this marvellous collection of songs.

All the material has been penned by Colman and Nash with the exception of ‘Sophie’s Song’ which is a Ribbons arrangement of Wayne Shorter’s ‘Night Dreamer’ with the lyrics written by Colman. In using original music and words there is a flow and narrative to the album that is both appealing and thought provoking.

The album opens with ‘Noble Heart’, a song that explores the feelings of loss and yearning, and the combination of Colman’s voice and Nash’s interpretive skills at the piano being matched by Iain Ballamy’s excellent tenor solo, and that is how the music continues throughout this delightful set.

Ballamy is again heard to fine effect on ‘Gardener’ as is fellow saxophonist Trish Clowes on ‘Little Light’ but it is the title track on which Percy Pursglove brings his melodic and warm flugel sound to ‘Ribbons’ in a wonderful performance for a trio of voice, piano and flugelhorn that steals the limelight.

At the heart of the album, however, is the relationship and interplay between Sara Colman and Rebecca Nash as heard on ‘Turning Over Stones’ and ‘Sophie’s Song’ that contains an exceptional solo from Nash. Highly recommended.