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Nat Birchall: The Storyteller: A Musical Tribute To Yusef Lateef
The deification of Yusef Lateef, which began only after his passing in 2013, rests on the first decade of his long recording career, from 1957—1967, when he extended the language of jazz to include elements of Asian and Middle Eastern musics while recording for Savoy, Prestige and Impulse. After a second decade with Atlantic, where he recorded ten stonkingly good soul-jazz albums, Lateef took up with Creed Taylor's CTI and began a sad decline into noodling wallpaper music. This period ...
read moreNat Birchall: Obeah Man
Welcome to the latest analog-era time warp... the vinyl revival has rebirthed the 45rpm seven-inch jazz single. The format faded away in the 1960s. Even back then, chart hits such as Stan Getz's “Desafinado" (Verve, 1962) were freak events, but before the coming of album playing FM radio stations, an edited version of an album track could be powerful promo on mainstream radio--and as Bob Weinstock, founder of the Prestige label, told an interviewer in 1959, “The four best promo ...
read moreNat Birchall: Cosmic Language
Spiritual jazz resonates most deeply during times of social stress and turmoil. It was, after all, created by African American musicians who were engaged with the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Later given the alternative description Afrofuturist jazz, the music had one foot planted in science fiction-inspired magical realism and the other in black consciousness-inspired social activism. The balance varied from musician to musician, but even the most magical realist among them--a grouping which would include Alice Coltrane, Pharoah ...
read moreNat Birchall: Creation
Coming less than a year after the 2015 release Invocations on Henley's Jazzman records, Creation finds Nat Birchall back on his own Sound Soul and Spirit label. Long term collaborator Adam Fairhall on piano, and Johnny Hunter on drums are retained from that record and we welcome back Andy Hay as a second drummer, last heard on 2011's 'Sacred Dimension' as well as saying hello to new boy Michael Bardon on bass. Whether influenced by the line-up changes ...
read moreNat Birchall: Invocations
There is a feeling of a new beginning on this collection from Nat Birchall. Superficially the album is released on Henley-on-Thames' Jazzman records rather than Birchall's own Sound Soul and Spirit records, on which he released the wonderful World Without Form and classic Live in Larissa. More tangibly only Adam Fairhall on piano remains from those two collections, representing the last common link to the pool of musicians Birchall and Matthew Halsall drew from in their classic collaborations on Gondwana ...
read moreNat Birchall: Live In Larissa
This limited double vinyl and download collection is a wonderful document of two nights that Birchall and his band played at the Duende Jazz Bar in Larissa during May 2013. The trip appears to have made an enormous impression on Birchall who commented shortly after returning that “I think our visit will become one of the defining experiences of my life..." drawing inspiration from people who were “the most spiritual, warm-hearted and generous I have ever met...." The ...
read moreNat Birchall Quintet: Live In Larissa
Two shows on the tiny stage of the Duende Jazz Bar in Larissa, Greece, in May 2013, form the basis for the Nat Birchall Quintet's Live In Larissa: a live album that provides a welcome and impressive addition to Birchall's discography.Birchall, a master of soprano and tenor saxophones who's based in the north west of England, has long been inspired by the music and spirituality of John Coltrane. The appearance here of Bill Lee's “John Coltrane" and Alice ...
read moreNat Birchall: World Without Form
In a world that often seems bereft of any sense of spirituality it's good to know that performers like saxophonist Nat Birchall are still true to the spirituality of music. Birchall, based in the northeast of England, continues to create beautiful, soulful, music on his fifth album as leader, World Without Form, in the company of some of the UK's finest young players.Birchall's avowed love of John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders remains clear in his playing, such as ...
read moreNat Birchall: Sacred Dimension
Just outside the Victorian architectural splendor of the city of Manchester lies some of England's most beautiful countryside. The area is home to a small group of musicians whose contemporary take on the music of John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, among others, is creating some of the finest and most spiritual sounds around. Trumpeter Matthew Halsall, head of Gondwana Records, is one member of this group. Nat Birchall is a key figure, and Sacred Dimension, his fourth album, finds the ...
read moreNat Birchall: Alone In The Music
Two of the most over-used phrases in music journalism are “overnight star" and “out of nowhere," and so apologies for starting with them here. But when it comes to describing British saxophonist Nat Birchall, they have an unusual degree of exactitude. Birchall, born in 1957 in the rural seclusion of the hill country of North-West England, where he still lives in 2010, and a saxophonist since 1979, didn't make an impression on Britain's national jazz scene until 2009, when he ...
read moreNat Birchall: Guiding Spirit
Nat BirchallGuiding SpiritGondwana Records2010 Who would have guessed that a group of musicians in the brash English city of Manchester would, in 2010, be rekindling the astral jazz forged by saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and harpist and pianist Alice Coltrane in the late 1960s? But it's happening, and happening with luminous conviction. The musicians are centered around trumpeter Matthew Halsall's Gondwana Records label. Saxophonist Nat Birchall's Guiding Spirit is Gondwana's fourth ...
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