Kenny Wheeler Legacy
Greenleaf Music is thrilled to announce the album Some Days Are Better: The Lost Scores by Kenny Wheeler Legacy featuring the Royal Academy of Music Jazz Orchestra and Frost Jazz Orchestra.
The release is a wide-ranging, expansive new project celebrating the legacy of one of the great, original voices in contemporary jazz, Kenny Wheeler.
Released to coincide with the publication of Wheeler’s highly anticipated biography Song For Someone: The Musical Life of Kenny Wheeler (Equinox Publishing), Some Days Are Better explores an undiscovered treasure of rarely-heard works by the iconic composer from a crucial and largely unknown period in his musical emergence. Recorded in partnership between the Royal Academy of Music (London) & the Frost School of Music (Miami).
Kenny Wheeler is considered one of the most influential figures in contemporary jazz. Born in Toronto in 1930 but based in the UK from 1952, by the 1960’s Wheeler had become highly regarded in the London scene, known as a post-bop trumpeter and flugelhorn player inspired by Booker Little and Freddie Hubbard, but also as a pioneering free player moving into unexplored territory alongside improvisers such as John Stevens, Evan Parker, Dave Holland and Derek Bailey. He died in 2014 at the age of 84, leaving behind an impactful legacy that has remained a towering influence for legions of acolytes. Legendary bassist and NEA jazz master, Dave Holland, a lifelong colleague of Wheeler, characterized him as so: “Kenny was a true original, always in the music. For his generation, he contributed a harmonic language, which at that time was brand new. Who he was, as a person, was embodied in the music in a certain way, which is the highest form of artistry.”
The first single is “Smatta”, which is a title thought up by Wheeler to capture an informal Canadian colloquialism abbreviated from ‘what’s the matter?’. This is a totally new and unheard arrangement of this canonical piece of his music, taken from Wheelers original scores written for a 1974 BBC radio broadcast. The song features trumpeter Ingrid Jensen and pianist Scottie Thompson, conducted by Nick Smart of the Royal Academy of Music.
The full album Some Days Are Better: The Lost Scores is available now for pre-order at the Greenleaf Music Bandcamp. It is available as digitally and on CD with a deluxe 36-page booklet and extensive liner notes and essays by biographer Nick Smart. Pre-order here.
