Robert Wyatt - Spectral Voices

For The Ghosts Within features jazz standards such as ‘In A Sentimental Mood’ and ‘Lush Life’, with Wyatt’s voice, human and aware as ever. Wyatt and Stephen tell Andy Robson how their collaboration developed.

"I had no ideas at all. But I said let’s do it anyway.” For Robert Wyatt, it was an offer too good to refuse when Ros Stephen and Gilad Atzmon wanted him for an album of songs with a string quartet. “I guess that’s pretty jazz,” laughs Wyatt, who remains the most affable, easy going of gentle men in a world that rarely respects the generous of spirit. "It’s true, though”, concurs Stephen, “you hear all these lovely stories about him that he’s just the nicest person, and he is, just the nicest guy to work with.”

For Stephen, the classically trained violinist and arranger, whose Sigamos Quartet is the engine room For The Ghosts Within, Wyatt’s consent was the culmination of a creative process that began in 2006. Back then she’d asked Atzmon to play with her Tango Siempre project – she had heard a track from MusiK on Late Junction and sent him a CD – ah, the modern mode of networking – and two tours and a recording resulted. From that grew the In Loving Memory Of America album and tour, with Atzmon and Stephen re-imagining the “Charlie Parker with strings” recordings.