A decade ago, trombonist/composer Raph Clarkson was a key figure in the charismatic, wackily eclectic, nu-funk UK ensemble World Service Project, but productive years with that band, and a freelance career playing everything from salsa to trad, prog, and free-improv, made it likely he would go his own way, as he did as a leader with 2018’s Soldiering On, and 2019’s Resolute. Those albums revealed that the gifted Clarkson was devoting himself to developing the most personal music he could - autobiographical, whimsical, political, and driven by his twin passions of open music-making and music education. Equal Spirits is an astonishingly imaginative next stage in that mission, bringing together 24 participants from the UK (including Chris Batchelor, Elliot Galvin and Mark Lockheart) and South Africa’s jazz scene.

Clarkson gracefully segues horn hooks, flying improv and hymnally jazzy South African warmth all over the set – notably on ‘Back Again’ with its jubilant Cape Town dance vibe, the brass-funky ‘Skip’, and a horn-swapping hook on ‘To Jo’burg’ that makes it hard to stay in your chair. Gentle gospel choruses and synth-orchestral harmonies swell from bass and piano duets (‘Hymn’), and the title track blooms from mysterious abstractions into rapturously tender choral song. The legacy of the great South African generations that have included Hugh Masekela, Abdullah Ibrahim and Bheki Mseleku, as well as their European champions like Keith Tippett and Django Bates have rarely been celebrated as empathically and ecstatically as this. Clarkson perhaps likes the specificity of spoken word more than some listeners who might prefer the eloquence of pure sound in an overly garrulous world, but Wise and Waiting is an extraordinary, impassioned, and devoted one-off just the same.