Issie Barratt's Interchange - Donna's Secret

The Guardian 80

(Fuzzy Moon Records)
The all-female Interchange band brings together jazz luminaries under Barratt’s assured leadership on this powerful album

Back in the day, some fans would raise eyebrows at the implications of the term “jazz education” – preferring the romance that this impulsive music was plucked out of the air on street corners by unschooled visionaries. Donna’s Secret, a collection of eight new works from UK composer/arranger Issie Barratt’s all-female Interchange big band, displays plenty of impulsive vision – but jazz education with visions of its own brought it here. Both the quality of the writing and the assured resourcefulness of the improvising owe a lot to the innovative Barratt’s work over three decades as a bandleader, composer, sax-player, teacher and proselytiser, particularly in bringing female instrumentalists to the foreground of a traditionally male-run art.