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Norma Winstone and Kit Downes: Outpost of Dreams review | John Fordham's jazz album of the month
The esteemed vocalist and prolific pianist weave their sounds together in an album of exquisite songs and extraordinary empathy
The prolific Downes has recordings with jazz luminaries from Andrew Cyrille and Bill Frisell to young Argentinian free-saxophonist Camila Nebbia in the pipeline, and collects the North Sea festival’s most prestigious innovation prize in Rotterdam with his Enemy trio on 13 July. On Outpost of Dreams, this immense shared reservoir of diverse experience and creativity is devoted to four Downes compositions and songs by Carla Bley, guitarist Ralph Towner, pianist John Taylor and Scottish folk-fiddler Aidan O’Rourke. Downes’s dreamily swaying Nocturne illuminates how free and yet bonded these two are, and if Nina Simone’s treatment of the traditional Black Is the Colour may never be rivalled, the veiled calamity of Winstone’s wistful version comes pretty close.
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