Claire Cope Ensemble-C launch new album Every Journey at Café Posk

“Where’s Rob?” was the cry as the band perched on the ledge of launching into their second set at a packed Café Posk. I guess when you’re the band leader’s partner you can cut a little slack, as the sax man, belatedly, coffee in hand, took his chair with a nod of apology toward wife and leader Claire Cope. “He likes his coffees,” she smiled. A little sternly.

But it’s a sign of Ensemble C’s sense of easeful co-operation, that they then leaned into the wide-open spaces of Claire’s ‘Amboseli’ with both relish and cohesion. Cope is an unabashed admirer of Maria Schneider and ‘Amboseli’, evoking the wide horizons of a Kenyan national park, shares much of the American’s lush generosity.

Big(ish) bands are a rarity in these parsimonious days, and it is to Café Posk’s credit they accommodated the 11-piece Ensemble C for the launch of its new album, Every Journey. As befitted it’s release on International Women’s Day, Cope has loosely themed the album around extraordinary women adventurers. So ‘Flight’, replete with a gorgeous trombone break from Anoushka Nanguy, evoked the spirit of Bessie Coleman, the first black/Native American woman to win a pilot’s license.

Other pieces, notably ‘Isabel’ were inspired by Jacki Hill-Murphy’s Adventuresses, tales of women making the most extreme of journeys. Hill-Murphy, an explorer herself who’s currently planning a summer trip across Mongolia by camel, was an enthusiastic audience member. She doubtless appreciated the beauteous ‘The Birch and the Larch’, a fable in Hill-Murphy’s book about Kate Marsden, a Victorian spinster who trekked across Siberia seeking a cure for leprosy.

With a lyric from Brigitte Beraha whose voice entwined with Rob Cope’s flute and enriched by Mike Soper’s flugelhorn, this was a piece as poignant as ‘Every Journey’, the night’s opener, was vibrant, sparkling with Ant Law’s guitar.

Other stand outs included Rob Cope’s bass clarinet on the Kenny Wheeler resonant ‘The Light of the Dark’, while Freddie Gavita’s trumpet flared bright throughout the evening. An appreciative POSK audience lapped it up. As another step in Claire Cope’s journey as leader and composer, and yes, musical explorer, this launch was indeed a special beginning.