Josephine Davies and Satori

“Weatherwards”

(Whirlwind Recordings WR4822)

Josephine Davies – tenor & soprano saxophones, Dave Whitford – bass, James Maddren – drums
with Alcyona Mick – piano

“Weatherwards” is the fourth album release from Satori, the band led by saxophonist and composer Josephine Davies, the winner of the 2019 Parliamentary Jazz Award for Best Instrumentalist.

 It follows “Satori” (2017) , “In the Corners of Clouds” (2018) and “How Can We Wake?” (2020)  all of which also appeared on the Whirlwind imprint, and all of which are reviewed elsewhere on the Jazzmann web pages.

Originally from the Shetland Isles, brought up in Hastings, but now based in London Davies was a relative late comer to the jazz ranks, switching from the classical to the jazz course after hearing the music of John Coltrane, most notably “A Love Supreme”. She’s been an important part of the UK jazz scene for a number of years, despite taking time out to complete a doctorate in psychotherapy.

Prior to Satori Davies led the JD5, a quintet featuring Dave Whitford on bass plus trumpeter Robbie Robson, keyboard player Ross Stanley and drummer Nick Smalley. Focussing on Davies’ original writing this line up recorded two enjoyable albums, “Elation” and “Perspective”.

She has also worked with small groups led by pianists Steve Melling Simon Purcell, Joy Ellis and Hans Koller, bassist Dominic Howles, trumpeter Loz Speyer and multi-instrumentalist Adam Glasser and also with the band Collocutor, led by saxophonist/flautist Tamar Osborn. 

Davies’  large ensemble engagements have included flautist Gareth Lockrane’s Big Band,  bassist Calum Gourlay’s Big Band, the London Jazz Orchestra, and, perhaps most significantly, the Pete Hurt Jazz Orchestra with whom she has also recorded, appearing on the 2016 release “A New Start”.

Davies also leads her own large ensemble, the  Ensō  Ensemble, the group name sourced from Zen Buddhist philosophy, as is that of Satori. Originally known as the Josephine Davies Jazz Orchestra, the ensemble made its début at London’s Vortex Jazz Club in April 2019. Inspired by the music of Maria Schneider, Vince Mendoza and Igor Stravinsky the focus here is very much on melody, harmony, colour and texture. The  Ensō  Ensemble is due to release its debut album on the Ubuntu Music imprint in December 2024, a recording that feature Davies’  “Ascension Suite”  a series of eight pieces representing the eight parts of the Celtic Wheel of the Year. Featuring a seventeen piece jazz orchestra this is a release that will be very eagerly awaited.

Her other projects include the all female folk-jazz trio Orenda, alongside vocalist Brigitte Beraha and pianist Alcyona Mick, which explores the traditional music of a number of European countries and blends them with jazz and classical elements.  Davies explains that the band name “comes from the Iroquois people; it is a spiritual force that may be called forth through song for acts of power, creativity and healing (though it may also be used as a destructive force)”.

Davies is also a key member of the Full Circle Quartet, a band founded by bassist and composer Terry Pack, once a member of the much loved progressive rock band The Enid. The quartet also features pianist Joss Peach and drummer Angus Bishop and the band’s excellent 2023 release “The South Downs Suite” includes compositional input from all four band members and, as its title suggests, is inspired by “living and working in and around the South Downs of England”.

Satori’s new album is also inspired by a specific location, Davies’ childhood home on Shetland, as her album liner notes explain;
“My first home was ‘Old Happyhansel’ on the west coast of Shetland, a place to which I am forever drawn back, and whose wild, unswept edges inspired the music of ‘Weatherwards’”.

The three previous Satori albums have all featured the trio of Davies, bassist Dave Whitford and either Paul Clarvis (on the debut) or James Maddren in the drum chair. “Weatherwards” introduces another instrumental voice in the form of pianist Alcyona Mick, Davies’ colleague from the Orenda project. Mick appears on six of the new album’s eleven tracks. Meanwhile a performance by the four piece version of Satori at Clun Valley in Bishop’s Castle in August 2024 was enthusiastically received by those that were there. Unfortunately I was unable to attend this show as I was covering Brecon Jazz Festival, but I have heard great things about it from those that were there.

Davies says of Mick’s addition to the group;
“Alcyona can be wholly spontaneous so we can retain the freedom of group improvisation; she knows how to leave space within the harmony and has such great ears, so she just fit straight in.” 

Despite this endorsement the album begins in saxophone trio mode with “Old Happyhansel”, featuring Davies on tenor sax. It’s a welcome reminder of the Satori sound that has graced the group’s previous three albums. The trio’s always melodic updating of the saxophone trio tradition has also been a source of delight and the easy, instinctive rapport between Davies, Whitford and Maddren has become even more impressive as it has developed over time. As we’ve learned this piece is named after Davies’ old family home and this is a musical landscape with which she, Whitford and Maddren have become familiar as they take elements of Sonny Rollins and even Thelonious Monk and make them very much their own. Davies’ fluent tenor sax soloing is complemented brilliantly by Whitford’s supple bass playing, he also features as a soloist, and Maddren’s loose limbed, consistently inventive drumming. Having seen the Satori trio perform live I have witnessed first hand the extraordinary musical chemistry between the members of the core trio.

Mick joins the group for the first time on “Saxa Vord”, a composition named for Shetland’s most northerly point. With Davies featuring on soprano this is a jaunty offering featuring darting folk inspired melody lines and a complex 12 / 8 rhythm, which the musicians skip around with great agility. Davies takes the first solo on soprano, her tone almost flute like. She’s followed by a thoughtful piano solo from Mick as the piece takes a darker turn, with the pianist deconstructing the tune, her percussive, Monk-ish playing evoking a response from Maddren as the drums as the pair enter into dialogue. Eventually the quartet coalesce once more around the main theme, but there are still further twists and turns prior to Maddren’s drum outro.

A pattern of alternating trio tunes with quartet numbers is established as the threesome deliver the next composition, the title of which, “Hiraeth”, takes us to Wales. It’s a Welsh word that describes a sense of longing for a missing home, or homesickness if you will.  Davies returns to tenor on a performance that begins softly and wistfully with Maddren deploying brushes and Whitford providing a deep, rich undertow for Davies’ melodic sax mediations, the yearning nature of her tone reflecting the tune’s title. Whitford is again featured as a soloist, his playing both deeply sonorous and highly melodic. Davies’ playing becomes more impassioned in the tune’s closing stages, with Maddren transitioning to sticks.

Mick returns for “Holes of Scraada”, a busy, sometimes turbulent, often fast moving piece, perhaps intended to mirror the area of rugged Shetland coastline after which it is named. However it’s not all sound and fury, a more loosely structured free jazz style episode sees the members of the quartet involved in a conversation that begins quietly and reflectively but subsequently becomes more agitated and garrulous, eventually leading to the return of the effervescent opening theme.

The trip piece “Up Helly Aa” celebrates Shetland’s winter festival, the raucous nature of which is partly reflected in the music. It features Davies at her most Rollins like as Whitford and Maddren deliver a loping, odd meter, cerebrally funky groove with Whitford’s bass occasionally coming to the fore. It’s a short but arresting piece that retains Satori’s ever present melodic sensibility.

“The Simmer Dim” represents something very different. It’s a lengthy (close to six and a half minutes) duet featuring piano and saxophone. Intimate and lyrical the piece was inspired by the ‘Midnight Sun’ of the Shetland summer – the Islands’ ties with Norway remain strong to this day. Davies melodic, gently probing soprano meditations are complemented by Mick’s empathic and intelligent pianism, and the performance also includes an extended passage of unaccompanied piano. Mick has recently released “Illusion”, an album featuring a series of duo performances recorded with alto saxophonist Martin Speake. It appears on Speake’s own Pumpkin record label and I intend to take a look at this recording shortly. If it’s as lovely as the duo performance here it should be well worth hearing.
“Ronas Voe” is a short collective improvisation featuring Davies, Whitford and Maddren. Recorded spontaneously it demonstrates another aspect of the trio’s uncanny report and features scurrying tenor sax lines and skittering drums, with Whitford’s bass somehow holding it altogether. Furtive and tentative at first, but more impassioned and confident later it says a lot during its two and a half minutes as the trio achieve a remarkable sense of coherence within a wholly improvised context.

“Mara Mara” is a more formal composition with Whitford and Maddren establishing a buoyant groove around which Davies’ tenor sax skips playfully, adding dashes of joyous folk inflected melody. The colourful details of Maddren’s drumming are a constant delight.

The second wholly improvised piece is the atmospheric “The Long Dark”, which commences with the sound of unaccompanied tenor sax, before evolving into a dialogue between sax and piano, with Maddren later adding brushed drum commentary, subtly aided and abetted by Whitford. It’s less obviously ‘improvised’ than its trio counterpart “Ronas Voe” and with its focus on melody,  mood and texture it almost sounds as if it could have been fully composed. It represents an excellent demonstration of he maxim “improvisation is spontaneous composition”.

“Song for the Selkie”, inspired by Scottish legend, is a lyrical, through composed piece that again embraces elements of folk inspired melody. Introduced by a passage of unaccompanied piano it first evolves into sax and piano duet, with bass and drums subsequently added. It’s a richly lyrical piece with the sax and piano melodies complemented by Maddren’s mallet rumbles and cymbal shimmers. The drummer later establishes a more propulsive groove that forms the basis for expansive but lyrical solos from Mick and Davies as the music moves away from the ECM style atmospherics of the introduction and into something more upbeat and celebratory.

The album concludes with an alternate take of “Up Helly Aa” with Mick this time added on piano. Again Whitford and Maddren establish the groove and Davies the melody, but the addition of Mick’s piano introduces an extra harmonic interest and she is subsequently featured as a soloist, ensuring that this version of the piece sounds very different to that performed by the trio. There is a brief feature for Maddren and Whitford towards the close.

“Weatherwards” represents another impressive statement from Davies and the Satori group and expands the musical possibilities of the project even further, as Davies explains;
 “I was interested in having a theme for the album – I’m fascinated by the origins of creative expression and where it comes from. I found myself writing more harmonically dense material and felt there was more to say as quartet – I was hearing more exploration of harmony and texture, and it’s been so much fun playing with those three.”

The idea of an overall ‘concept’ for the album works superbly and Davies’ love for the Shetlands finds expression via intelligently written music that is readily accessible and often beautiful, but also subtly challenging. The addition of Mick for some of the pieces works well with the piano bringing extra melodic, rhythmic, harmonic and textural possibilities. However the inclusion of a number of trio pieces maintains the link with Satori’s previous work and confirms the high level of creativity that the core trio is capable of. Over the course of the album a good balance is struck between the trio and quartet performances and the presence of Mick represents a welcome addition. A word too for the artwork of the multi-talented Fini Bearman, whose visual images complement the music of Satori.

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