Aleema Gray used British Library’s collection to assemble Beyond the Bassline exhibition about Black British music

Young cultural researchers need greater access to the UK’s rich archival resources so untold stories can be brought to light, according to the curator of an exhibition that documents five centuries of Black British music, from the Tudor court to grime.

Dr Aleema Gray has assembled Beyond the Bassline, an expansive tour through the past 500 years of Black British musical history, which is being hosted by the British Library – the exhibition pulls from its collection – and seeks to redefine the limits of what we consider Black British music.

(Impulse!)
British jazz star Shabaka Hutchings drops the sax for reeds and flutes on an album exploring fear, courage and the power of breathwork

Typical: you wait ages for a flute album from a musician famous for other things, and then two come along almost at once. Hot on the exhale of rapper André 3000’s New Blue Sun , released last November, comes another exploratory redefinition, this time from British sax phenomenon Shabaka Hutchings . André 3000 guests here.

Hutchings stepped away from the saxophone at the end of 2023. Since the pandemic, this maven of the London jazz renaissance has been reassessing , exploring the gentler timbres of the shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute whose breathwork takes time to master.

(ACT)
Harmonica star Maret and pianist/composer Collin pay homage to Ennio Morricone with drifting church-echo and trancelike sounds

Ornette Coleman once told the BBC’s Jazz on 3 that when his mother Rosa gave him his first saxophone, but couldn’t afford lessons, he thought it was a toy and played it without realising “you have to learn something to find out what the toy does”. Maybe it’s an extreme case, but not an unfamiliar jazz story. Collisions of improvisers’ whims and formal and informal learning drove ghetto prodigy trumpeter Louis Armstrong’s trailblazing timing, dynamics and rhythmic variation, Charlie Christian’s coolly swinging melodic transformations of solo electric guitar in the 30s – or John Coltrane’s lung-busting 50s/60s stretching of a saxophone’s range to make seamless long sounds and split-note harmonies that the instrument’s inventor, Adolphe Sax, never imagined.

Swiss-born harmonica star Grégoire Maret , mentored by Belgium’s Toots Thielemans , adopted an instrument once widely regarded as a toy and spectacularly enriched its voice-like sound and solo-improv agility. Ennio, the follow-up to Maret’s acclaimed 2020 album Americana , rekindles his rapport on that set with superb French pianist/composer Romain Collin, in homage to movie-score maestro Ennio Morricone . The pair are intimately and spontaneously conversational on Once Upon a Time in America (Deborah’s Theme), while the ecstatic ensemble climax of The Good the Bad and the Ugly: The Ecstasy of Gold often recalls Maret’s former collaborations with the Pat Metheny Group. Once Upon a Time in the West unfolds over a Jarrett-like rocking piano vamp; Se Telefonando is a vocal duet for Cassandra Wilson and Gregory Porter; and Man With a Harmonica is recast in drifting church-echo harmonica and slide-guitar sounds, over Collin’s trancelike piano ostinato.

From elephant blasts to spiritual jazz, Wynton Marsalis’s concerto is a history of the world in trumpet form. As she prepares to give the UK premiere, Balsom describes the thrill of playing it

When I tell people I’m a trumpet soloist, there are three kinds of response I usually get: “Wow, what a great job!”, “Isn’t that unusual for a woman?” And “That’s jazz, right?”

And it is a great job, the best in the world, if not always the easiest when you consider you have to master hundreds of the tiniest muscles around your mouth, perfectly align your breath control and musical goals, and hold your nerve as you walk out on to the stage to perform with both precision and flair, even on the day you’ve broken your toe or your toddler is sick. Everyone knows if a trumpeter is having an off day (perhaps the tiny lip muscles – the embouchure – are bruised from the day before, or not quite feeling under control or strong enough), and a soloist is only as good as their last concert. But what a thrill it is to do this high wire act for decades.

A musical seeker since childhood, the 73-year-old’s journeys have taken him from lessons with Cecil Taylor to a formative tour of Africa and now work with the Outkast star. He explains why he’s still chasing the next chapter

The greatest music by spiritual jazz maestro and acclaimed saxophonist Idris Ackamoor suggests a swirling symbiosis between the living and the dead. Take his 2020 song When Will I See You Again?, in which his unfeigned croak of the words “we’ll all be fine” suggests that the “freak storms” of sudden loss will ultimately be replaced by rainbows. Or there’s the more chaotic and wordless Sheba’s Dance Part 2 from 1973. It sounds like Crosstown Traffic played by a revolutionary African tribe, and a flute whistles into the abyss like a shaman hoping to awaken lost ancient spirits. It makes sense that the first instrument the 73-year-old musician ever learned to play was something that carried a link to his ancestors.

“My grandma Mary used to do the laundry for a white family, and they had this old piano that no one ever played,” Ackamoor says, reflecting on a childhood spent largely on the south side of Chicago, where racial segregation was prominent. “The family donated it to my grandma and it was later handed down to me as a seven-year-old. I always have real reverence for my ancestors: whenever I play music, I try to connect to their spirits. I want them to empower me.”

(33 Jazz)
A punchy set of originals from bassist/vocalist Charlie Pyne and her crew, celebrating the ups and downs of motherhood

British jazz is currently blessed with vocal talents. Bandleader Charlie Pyne is just one sample from a spectrum that embraces big band fan James Hudson, who includes a cool version of Disney’s Feed the Birds on his second album of standards, Moonray , and songwriting diva Sarah L King , whose new album Fire Horse comes steeped in soul influences such as Nina Simone.

Charlie Pyne is different again, a bass player with her own quartet and, on this second album, a set of originals drawn from her experience as a woman and mother. Pyne sings with a high, bright voice that can soar when she chooses, though she is also happy to punch out her lyrics in tandem with her bass parts. The quartet meld easily; drummer Katie Patterson urgent without being noisy, and pianist Liam Dunachie contributing melodic solos alongside Luke Pinkstone’s tenor (and occasional soprano) sax. On standout Am I Doing It Right? Pyne frets about motherhood, celebrating its triumphs on the title cut. Blackberries salutes autumn joyously while A Fistful of Keys provides a moodier moment, the keys in question being poised ready for a would-be assailant. An enjoyable, effervescent set.

(Self-released)
The UK-based French folk singer embellishes her trad leanings with sultry blues and upbeat swing on a poignant and poetic second album

Her 2020 debut, Numberless Dreams , introduced Bristol-based French singer Julie Abbé as an artist steeped in Irish and English folk with a telling way with WB Yeats poems. The album closed with Yeats’s celebrated line: “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” Someone has clearly trampled over Abbé’s since. She frames this second outing as “a full cycle of love, celebrating the beauty of what once was, and honouring the different stages of grieving and healing”. It sounds heavy going, yet opener Lanternes d’Or is a slinky blues that evokes a postwar Parisian cafe, brightly sung and artfully accompanied by a small group in which clarinet and guitar shine.

It proves a lodestar for a song cycle in French and English that is by turns sad, sultry and philosophical, its lyrics locating grief, anger and joy in precise but poetic language. Abbé is a tender, expressive singer – on a brace of tracks she dispenses with lyrics to croon and fly wordlessly – while her quartet, led by guitarist and producer James Grunwell, shift easily between folk, swing, jazz and Abbé’s own Poitou bal tradition. She is well known in West Country folk circles, with a place at Glastonbury’s opening ceremony, but this is a lovely reinvention. Formidable !

(Native Rebel Recordings)
The latest album in an exciting wave of experimental north Indian classical music enlists Shabaka Hutchings and Leafcutter John in its downtempo quietude

The intricate vocal acrobatics of north Indian classical music have been fertile ground for exciting fusions in recent years. Singer Arooj Aftab ’s delicate variations of Urdu poetry have provided the perfect accompaniment for ambient synth soundscapes and sweeping strings on 2021’s Vulture Prince and 2023’s Love in Exile , while US vocalist Sheherazaad’s 2024 debut Qasr found harmony in Hindi lyrics and finger-picked Spanish guitar.

The latest artist to engage with this experimentation is New York-born and Tamil Nadu-raised vocalist Ganavya. Having previously collaborated with bassist and composer Esperanza Spalding, as well as joining soul collective Sault’s debut live show in 2023, she has now enlisted British jazz artist Shabaka Hutchings to produce her latest album. Across 13 tracks, Ganavya’s warm, ornate Tamil vocals are set to bubbling modular synths and breathy woodwind flutes, producing a mix of spiritual jazz and ambient experimentalism.

(Blue Note)
The octogenarian joyfully whispers and warbles his way through sublime tone poems, impassioned tributes and traditional spirituals with an all-star band

Charles Lloyd is the last man standing of an inspired 1950s American saxophone generation, which included his late friends and contemporaries John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, and the now-retired Sonny Rollins. He once recalled to the Guardian that the free-jazz visionary Coleman had told him in 1956: “Man, you sure can play the saxophone, but that don’t have a lot to do with music.” Lloyd has been searching the world’s songs for the heartfelt secrets beyond technique ever since, and his voice-like sound and intuitive ensemble communion seems to convey more with less with each exquisite new album.

The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow – new and old material played by an all-star lineup – is released on Lloyd’s 86th birthday, 15 March. Backed by pianist/composer Jason Moran, bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Brian Blade, this set’s beautiful opener Defiant, Tender Warrior builds a bewitching trance from soft piano wavelets, growling bass accents and snare-pattern whispers before Lloyd’s breathy tenor long-tones and enraptured top-end warbles even begin. Monk’s Dance, a tribute to the pianist and composer whom Lloyd calls “the high priest”, opens on Moran’s free-to-stride piano whirlpools, setups for Lloyd’s whimsical lateral-bop sax solo.