Release Date: 07 January 2022
Label: EFPI Records
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 5060608700110
Genres: Jazz Contemporary
Description
Both stalwarts of Manchester's creative music scene, Adam Fairhall and Johnny Hunter's piano/drums duo was first established as a vehicle to explore early jazz forms through an avant garde lens, their latest project explores the repertoire and idiom of groundbreaking Trinidadian pianist Winifred Atwell, a much neglected figure of 1950s British popular music.
Atwell was enormously popular in Britain and Australia in the post-war era, selling over 20 million records, yet she is barely a footnote in jazz histories and histories of popular music. In a sense, her music falls between stools; containing too little improvisation to be regarded as 'genuinely' jazz, but too much a part of the murky pre-rock era of popular music to be considered by pop histories.
Nonetheless, Atwell forged a pioneering career as a Black female instrumentalist - she was the first Black person to have a No.1 hit in the UK. Her music brought together aspects of the honky tonk piano craze sweeping America with the music hall and pub piano traditions of Britain, resonating deeply with the mid-century revivals of ragtime and traditional jazz in both the US and the UK, and making boogie and ragtime household sounds. In this sense Atwell was a nexus point of various streams of transatlantic popular music.
Johnny and Adam have forged a close musical understanding via a number of projects, including their piano trio Fragments (Northern Contemporary, 2019) and organ trio Revival Room (Efpi, 2021). Their communication, quick-thinking and sheer playfulness is fully evident in any context, but particularly so in this duo format. Winifred Atwell Revisited is not only a respectful tribute to a hugely important and overlooked musician, but an engaging and inventive album in its own right.
Tracklisting
Beats & Pieces Big Band
Johnny Hunter Quartet
Let Spin
Richard Jones Trio
Silence Blossoms
Quadraceratops
Let Spin
Let Spin
Nigel Price Organ Trio
Conrad Herwig
Norma Winstone & Kit Downes
Oded Tzur
Su Rossy Girod, Nat Su, Jorge Rossy
Jonathan Salvi Arugula Sextet
Bob Baldwin
Steven Nichols
