Norma Winstone Trio at Vancouver International Jazz Festival at Performance Works

MADE IN THE UK 2014

An English singer, a German reedman, an Italian pianist. Sometimes called Distances (they prefer this), sometimes the Norma Winstone Trio or Norma Winstone’s Chamber Music, by any name a remarkable group whose intimate performances encompass a great arc of music. Here are three adventurous musicians united by a profound feeling for song. The stark instrumentation -voice, piano, bass clarinet/soprano sax – seems never to limit their repertoire, but to encourage the players to explore widely, and to make musical use of the available space. Jazz ballads, old and new, find their place alongside – for instance – adaptations of Friulian folk songs, and ‘chamber’ pieces influenced by classical or contemporary composition. Textures, colours and rhythms may be drawn from scattered, surprising sources: a sudden bright flash of calypso, perhaps, or the hypnotic lulling of an Armenian cradle song. Winstone, Gesing and Venier have played songs from Cole Porter to Komitas, borrowed melodies from Satie and Coltrane, culled lyrics from James Joyce poems and Christina Rosetti nursery rhymes....

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MADE IN THE UK 2014

An English singer, a German reedman, an Italian pianist. Sometimes called Distances (they prefer this), sometimes the Norma Winstone Trio or Norma Winstone’s Chamber Music, by any name a remarkable group whose intimate performances encompass a great arc of music. Here are three adventurous musicians united by a profound feeling for song. The stark instrumentation -voice, piano, bass clarinet/soprano sax – seems never to limit their repertoire, but to encourage the players to explore widely, and to make musical use of the available space. Jazz ballads, old and new, find their place alongside – for instance – adaptations of Friulian folk songs, and ‘chamber’ pieces influenced by classical or contemporary composition. Textures, colours and rhythms may be drawn from scattered, surprising sources: a sudden bright flash of calypso, perhaps, or the hypnotic lulling of an Armenian cradle song. Winstone, Gesing and Venier have played songs from Cole Porter to Komitas, borrowed melodies from Satie and Coltrane, culled lyrics from James Joyce poems and Christina Rosetti nursery rhymes.

“…English singer Norma Winstone, a performer who has long turned private rumination into reverberating eloquence” John Fordham, Guardian

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