Matthew Halsall: An Ever Changing View

Based in the northern English city of Manchester, trumpeter Matthew Halsall debuted on record in 2008 with Sending My Love (Gondwana), a stylish take on the meditative end of the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders. Halsall's emergence pre-dated by over half a decade that of the London alternative scene vanguarded by musicians such as Nubya Garcia and Shabaka Hutchings, and his trajectory has continued to progress quite apart from it. This is unusual in England, a small country where most roads sooner or later lead to London.

By 2015, Halsall had released six well-received albums as leader, but most of the musicians he worked with had by then moved to London or elsewhere. It was no longer possible to maintain the band as a working unit and, reluctantly, Halsall stopped recording and touring. He did not become idle: he continued developing his Gondwana label (which is now also the home of Portico Quartet, GoGo Penguin and Mammal Hands among others). He also produced and played on fellow traveller Dwight Trible's acclaimed 2017 album Inspirations (Gondwana), and in 2019 released Oneness (Gondwana, 2019), a three-disc set of previously unissued recordings. Halsall spoke about this period, and how he moved on from it, in an interview with AAJ which can be found here.

In 2020, however, Halsall returned as bandleader, releasing the lovely Salute To The Sun (Gondwana), his first new album since 2015. Aside from bassist Gavin Barras, his octet's lineup was a new one, made up of younger players based in and around Manchester. But the groove was as before, a gleaming continuation of the tradition birthed by Coltrane and Sanders.

2023's An Ever Changing View features the same band, augmented by a couple more percussionists, and has much the same vibe. But there is a twist. A starting point for the new album was Halsall's library of percussion instruments, from congas and kalimba (which he plays on five tracks) to various bells, chimes and clusters of seeds which he sampled and looped to use as a foundation for the songs. On the first single, "Water Street," for example, spirals of kalimba, glockenspiel and other percussion cushion the gentle four-on-the-floor beat (check the YouTube below). It is all just what the doctor ordered.