Laura Jurd, Paul Dunmall - Fanfares and Freedom (2024)

A live recording from a piece premiered at the 2023 Cheltenham Jazz Festival, and later recorded at The Vortex. Laura Jurd was commissioned to write this piece for scored ensemble plus improvising quartet, and the resulting piece balances the composed and improvised elements beautifully in the fast moving 45 minute work which is very much in the tradition of the best British jazz.

"I don’t think I’ll ever forget hearing Paul Dunmall play for the first time. Whilst aware of his gravitas as an improviser, I hadn’t been in the same room as him playing the saxophone until the first rehearsal of this music. His utterly courageous and no-holds-barred engagement with the present is something to behold. This album was recorded live at the Vortex Jazz Club in London. In an effort to capture the music at it’s best, we performed the same set of music twice, the resultant recording being the second set (bar one short improvisation from the first). Paul’s energy and dynamism was unwavering and I have no doubt that he had a third set in him also - a true ‘tour-de-force’.

When commissioned to write this music, I was immediately excited and in some ways, joyfully daunted by the challenge. Aware of the dynamic magic of his quartet, it was immediately clear that the only role for Paul in the work was one of complete freedom. The question at that point, was how to make this the work of a ‘composer’ and put my artistic stamp on the whole affair? Whilst there are many composers interested in the blur between the written and the improvised, I wanted to give the listener a satisfyingly coherent sense of when they were listening to improvisation and when they were listening to conventional notation - the written music for the most part, fairly brazen in it’s stylistic identity. I’ve long been excited by the prospect of composing music for a chamber ensemble of brass players - all at equally home reading notation, improvising freely and in more of a typical jazz context . And there it began - a musical dialogue between the Paul Dunmall Quartet and Brass Quintet, both parties summoning, reacting to, propelling, welcoming, daring and disrupting the other. This was an album I never expected to make, which in itself feels like a celebration of spontaneity and the unexpected. I hope you enjoy listening." - Laura Jurd, May 2024

Paul Dunmall - tenor & sopranino saxophones
Liam Noble - piano
Caius Williams - double bass
Miles Levin - drums
Laura Jurd - trumpet
Chris Batchelor - trumpet
Alex Paxton - trombone
Raphael Clarkson - trombone
Oren Marshall - tuba

Tracklist:
1-1. Paul Dunmall, Laura Jurd - Fanfare 1 (03:17)
1-2. Paul Dunmall, Laura Jurd - Opening Out (09:18)
1-3. Paul Dunmall, Laura Jurd - Onward Stomp (13:10)
1-4. Paul Dunmall, Laura Jurd - Toddle-oddle (05:48)
1-5. Paul Dunmall, Laura Jurd - Chorale (05:07)
1-6. Paul Dunmall, Laura Jurd - Fanfare 2 (08:52)