Marysia Osu: Harp, Beats & Dreams

Who knows how the jazz harp paradigm might have evolved had the instrument's most adventurous twentieth-century player, Detroit-born Dorothy Ashby, lived beyond her premature passing in 1986. Since then, most American jazz harpists have stuck pretty closely to the neo-classical glissandos and block chords-based style established by Alice Coltrane. New York's Brandee Younger is among the few who have shown a more than passing interest in Ashby's work and its emphasis on horn-like single-notes runs.

In Britain, harps are often heard on the albums coming out of London's underground jazz scene. Scene auteurs tenor saxophonist Binker Golding and drummer Moses Boyd, for instance, featured harpist Tori Handsley on their gritty and often ferocious semi-free Binker and Moses albums Journey To The Mountain Of Forever (Gearbox, 2017) and Alive In The East? (Gearbox, 2018). On the parallel scene in the northern city of Manchester, trumpeter and Gondwana Records founder Matthew Halsall has featured harpists on all his albums to date, either Alice Roberts or Maddie Herbert or Rachael Gladwin.

Again, as in America, most British-based harpists have kept to the Coltrane model. London-based, Ukraine-born Alina Bzhezhinska is an exception. Starting out as a straight Coltrane disciple on her first album, Inspiration (Ubuntu, 2018), which was mostly composed of Coltrane covers, Bzhezhinska reshuffled the pack on the funk-infused Reflections (BBE, 2022), which included just one Alice Coltrane tune ("Fire"), co-written with Joe Henderson, and "Action Line" from Ashby's Afro-Harping (Cadet,1968). In 2024, on a duo project with her regular collaborator saxophonist Tony Kofi, Bzhezhinska struck out in a modern-day spiritual-jazz direction with Altera Vita (BBE).

Another exceptional London-based harpist is Poland-born Marysia Osu, aka Maria Osuchowska, not so much for her playing style as in her use of technology to expand the harp's vocabulary. On her work with spiritual-jazz bands Maisha and Levitation Orchestra, and on Harps, Beats & Dreams, her own-name debut, Osu, though by no means a Coltrane clone, approaches the harp more like Coltrane than Ashby. Osu's deft and imaginative use of fx pedals and studio technology on Harp, Beats & Dreams, however, takes the instrument into new audio territory.

Harp, Beats & Dreams may be too close to ambient music for some AAJ readers, but there can be no denying Osu's sonic invention. The album is essentially a solo affair, on which Osu also plays a little piano and clarinet, but she is occasionally joined by fellow Levitation members and/or Maisha associates Plumm, aka Sophie Plummer, on vocals, Yuis, aka Lluis Domenech Plana, flute and Tom Oldfield, cello. Also guesting: Matt Davies, drums, and Riccardo Albini Dabire, bass.

P.S. Verve reissued Dorothy Ashby's Afro-Harping in a Deluxe Edition in late September 2024. The edition includes eight alternate takes including extended versions of Ashby and Phil Upchurch's "Afro-Harping" and Freddie Hubbard's "Little Sunflower." A review can be read here.