Niklas Winter: Graduale
(abovoice. Album assessment by Phil Johnson)

Unusually for a guitarist’s album, there’s not an overabundance of guitar on ‘Graduale’ by the Finnish composer and instrumentalist Niklas Winter. As a substitute, Winter – who is because of play the music from the album along with his personal quartet and the choir Eclectic Voices at a London Jazz Competition live performance (particulars beneath) – presents a superbly appointed suite combining solos, duos and trios that includes the excellent English trumpeter Henry Lowther, and preparations of items from the Graduale Aboense hymnbook, comprising a number of the earliest written music in Finland, sung by the Utopia Chamber Choir from Espoo.

The result’s a completely profitable run of fourteen very completely different tracks that hold collectively to offer an general aesthetic that’s each meditative and swinging. Lowther, on trumpet and flugelhorn, sounds completely masterful, particularly on the solo options the place his sturdy, plangent tone on flugel, heard towards a sepulchral reverb, communicates a deep and stately sense of melancholy endurance.

The opposite gamers are the vibraphonist Severi Pyysalo and the cellist Juho Laitinen, each of whom sound like stars. And when Niklas Winter does consent to play, with a delicate semi-acoustic bloom to the sound that may put you in thoughts of Joe Go, Jim Corridor or Barney Kessel as a lot as Invoice Frisell, his unaccompanied solos really feel unerringly proper. The LJF live performance, with the choir components sung by Eclectic Voices, can be directed by Scott Stroman.

LIVE: Eclectic Voices and Niklas Winter Group (Graduale – Songs of the Spirit) can be at The Actors’ Church (St Paul’s Covent Backyard) on 10 November at 8pm as a part of the EFG London Jazz Competition