Kenny Wheeler's ‘Some Days Are Better: The Lost Scores’ to be released in January 2025 on Greenleaf Music

June 2024 saw the Royal Academy of Music’s Jazz Department collaborate with the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music for a special recording of late jazz trumpet legend Kenny Wheeler’s ‘Lost Scores’, performing rarely heard works from Wheeler’s formative years and then recording them at Abbey Road Studios. 

Initiated as part of a research endeavour by trumpeter Nick Smart, the Academy’s Head of Jazz, the project has seen the resurrection of many of Wheeler’s lesser-known works that were broadcast as BBC sessions in the 1970s. The original manuscripts were obtained by the Academy in 2012, and the process of archiving and cataloguing them was undertaken by Smart and Adam Taylor, the Academy’s Librarian. Much of this music was not released on Wheeler’s later albums and has seldom been heard since the BBC sessions.

The two jazz academies had connected several years ago, and in 2018 Smart and top British bassist Dave Holland had performed some of Wheeler’s music at a residency at the Frost School in Miami. Jazz professor and multiple Grammy-winning trumpeter John Daversa discussed the idea of recording the music but the original studio date of June 2020 was inevitably postponed by the pandemic.

The recent London recording sessions were preceded by four days of rehearsals and a performance of Wheeler’s Lost Scores at the Vortex Jazz Club, Dalston on Monday 24 June, which was attended by Wheeler's son Mark and daughter Louann. The students then recorded for two days at Abbey Road Studios, and were joined by two legends of the British jazz scene: saxophonist Evan Parker and jazz singer and lyricist Norma Winstone, who was part of the original Kenny Wheeler big band sessions.

Commenting on the sessions Nick Smart said: “Kenny was a consummate professional, an incredible composer and arranger, improviser and instrumentalist, and had a completely individual and recognisable voice in all those contexts. The music from this specific period is beautifully inclusive at its very essence – conceived around the diverse musical approaches of the players with whom he felt most comfortable – so it was incredibly moving to see the musicians from both Frost and the Academy work together with exactly that same spirit to pull this recording off to such high standards.”

Some Days Are Better focuses on a distinct period of Wheeler’s musical output that has, up until now, gone largely unheard, and is regarded as a “missing link” in his catalogue. Wheeler’s debut release as a composer was Windmill Tilter by the John Dankworth Band, released in 1968. Immediately following that, when he was finally the leader of his own big band, there was a four-year period during which his only venue was annual/bi-annual BBC broadcasts. In this highly fertile period, a bold new approach emerged that combined his exquisite harmonic and melodic touch, but with the fire and fearlessness of all his free-jazz sensibilities from the same period. The only public record of this period is the 1973 recording Song For Someone, Wheeler’s true debut as a leader.

This was a period of rapid growth and development for an already mature artist, a largely undocumented outpouring of bold, experimental and beautiful music whose conception was made possible only because of the circumstances that coalesced for Kenny at that exact moment. It was also music that burned fast and bright in his catalogue, before further circumstances required the consolidation into the more distilled, even conventional, large ensemble music he is known more widely for.

“While researching the BBC archives for the writing of his biography, it became clear that the music from these early broadcasts was critical in filling out the picture of Kenny’s personality as a composer,” adds Smart. “We had also acquired the Kenny Wheeler Archive into the Royal Academy’s Collections in 2012, and it became apparent that much of this music was contained within the many plastic bags and cardboard boxes we’d unloaded from his attic.”

L-R: John-Daversa, Brinley Heywood-Snell, Michael Dudley, James Copus and Nick-Smart

This unique legacy project has been curated by Smart, who in addition to co-authoring his biography, was a close friend and colleague of Kenny’s. Smart was instrumental in acquiring the Wheeler Archive in the RAM’s Library Collections, and it was through the meticulous research for the book and with access to the archive that this project took shape.

The album’s special guest soloists include legendary trumpeters Ingrid Jensen, Brian Lynch and Etienne Charles, young UK star James Copus, pianist Shelly Berg, saxophonist Chris Potter (who recorded with Wheeler on 2005’s What Now?), the aforementioned British/European jazz icons, Norma Winstone and Evan Parker – both of whom were lifelong colleagues of Kenny’s and featured on the original BBC broadcasts in the 1970s – and the two directors of RAM and FROST respectively, trumpeters Nick Smart and John Daversa. It is testament to Wheeler’s legacy that such a diverse and wide-ranging collection of musicians should wish to be part of this – all overseen in the executive production for Greenleaf by Dave Douglas, himself a fan and friend of Kenny’s and with whom he oversaw his lifetime contribution acknowledged in 2011’s Festival of New Trumpet Music residency.

The album Some Days Are Better: The Lost Scores is set to be released on US jazz label Greenleaf Records on 31 January 2025, soon after what would have been Wheeler’s birthday on 14 January. This also coincides with the release of a new biography, Song for Someone: The Musical Life of Kenny Wheeler, co-authored by Nick Smart.

For more info visit www.ram.ac.uk and greenleafmusic.com