Solstice - Alimentation

The Guardian 80

(Two Rivers)

Walthamstow’s E17 music collective houses some of the UK’s most creative jazz players, and the Solstice sextet – which includes imaginative multilingual vocalist Brigitte Beraha and the copiously inventive Tori Freestone on saxes – confirm just that on this set of lyrically fresh originals, plus one cover in bassist Dave Manington’s arrangement of Björk’s The Anchor Song. On Brazilian-influenced pieces, the Jobim-devoted Beraha’s vaporous grace often suggests Flora Purim and Norma Winstone – and the free spirit of Hermeto Pascoal flits through this music, too. Winstone’s role in the free-conversational vocal, piano and horn interplay of the long-gone Azimuth group is sometimes glimpsed, notably as Beraha’s voice, John Turville’s piano and Freestone’s tenor mingle on the wistful Mourning Porridge. Beraha is delicate and then improvisationally free on The Anchor Song, the dreamy Avocado Deficit (food themes are recurrent, the band being keen cooks) finds Freestone at her smokiest and then wildest, and the John Tayloresque Turville and edgily rockish guitarist Jez Franks reveal the band’s fiercer qualities on drummer George Hart’s circuitous title track.