Royal Academy of Music Jazz Orchestra celebrate the life and music of Kenny Wheeler

If one could have bottled the sheer spirit, affection and accord felt in the Royal Academy of Music's historic Duke's Hall last night for this celebration of the life and music of the influential trumpeter, flugelhorn player and composer Kenny Wheeler, who knows what healing power it could bring to a much-troubled world.

Held to mark the recent release of Some Days Are Better - The Lost Scores Kenny Wheeler featuring The Royal Academy Jazz Orchestra and Frost Jazz Orchestra on Greenleaf records and the launch of the biography Song For Someone: The Musical Life of Kenny Wheeler (Equinox Publishing) by Brian Shaw and the academy's Head of Jazz, Nick Smart (pictured below left, Evan Parker, seated right) – both covered at length in Jazzwise's March 2025 issue – Nick Smart, had assembled a stellar orchestra studded with academy students, guest soloists and the book's co-author trumpeter Brian Shaw. To see such revered UK names as Norma Winstone and Evan Parker, alongside upcoming trumpet stars James Copus, Tom Walsh, Mike Lovatt and the students, the past, present and future of UK jazz came together in a rare memorable moment under the direction of Smart to breathe revitalising life and soul into these recently discovered Wheeler scores.

And what better way to start than 'Smatta' and 'CPEP' from The Lost Scores. The former typifying Wheeler's adventurous late 1960s/early 70s period which combined his harmonic and melodic sensibilities with a free jazz fire. Norma Winstone's wordless vocals summoned the spirit of Azimuth while Evan Parker's serpentine soprano squalls intensified via circular breathing into a short but sense-snapping unaccompanied duet with promising young drummer Ananda Hamon, which she won't forget in a hurry!

From Wheeler's ECM album Double Double You, the tribute to his father, 'WW', had a beautiful new arrangement for the orchestra, which alternated players throughout the evening to show the changing tonal colour palate of Wheeler's arrangements. Nick Smart stepped into the trumpet section while Pete Churchill conducted for 'Enowena' from The Long Waiting, with a spirited vocal from Sylvie Noble and flying flugelhorn improvisation from James Copus.

The encore of 'Sweet Time Suite' from Music For Large and Small Ensembles, where Tom Walsh “caught Kenny Wheeler to perfection” according to Jazzwise’s Alyn Shipton, brought the audience, many of who were musicians, to its feet as beaming smiles from the likes of Iain Bellamy, Emma Rawicz, Julian Joseph, Byron Wallen, Orphy Robinson, Henry Lowther, Gareth Lockrane, Orlando le Fleming, Tom Cawley and Jasper Høiby said it all.