Adding a chapter to jazz history

Frost School of Music jazz faculty and students joined their British counterparts on a recording that captures a missing link in jazz icon Kenny Wheeler’s musical legacy. The jazz world is anticipating the album’s January 31 release.
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Musicians and producers during the recording of "The Lost Scores" at Abbey Road Studios last summer. All photos courtesy of the Royal Academy of Music.

An album of long-lost music by a British-Canadian jazz legend comes out today, the product of a years-long effort by jazz program leaders at the Frost School of Music and London’s Royal Academy of Music.

“Some Days Are Better: The Lost Scores” captures pivotal music by Kenny Wheeler, a brilliant, groundbreaking jazz composer and trumpet player, which he created for live shows on BBC radio between 1969 and 1974. Performed only once, they were subsequently hidden away in storage for almost 50 years. Until last June, when members of the Frost Jazz Orchestra traveled to London to record “Lost Scores” with members of the Academy’s Jazz Orchestra at the legendary Abbey Road Studios.

“It’s an opportunity to touch history,” says John Daversa, Chair of Studio Music and Jazz at the Frost School, who conceived and organized the project with Nick Smart, head of Jazz Programmes at the Academy, starting in 2018. “Kenny Wheeler is part of the jazz canon. We all studied his music and his playing and his unique, brilliant, original voice, which shaped every jazz composer and trumpet player who came after him.”

The album, on U.S. label Greenleaf Music, has been eagerly anticipated in the jazz world, in England in particular. There have already been multiple previews and reviews in British and European media, and Downbeat magazine will run a feature later this month. The recording’s release coincides with the publication of “Song for Someone: The Musical Life of Kenny Wheeler,” by Brian Shaw and Smart, a trumpeter who played with Wheeler and a close friend who persuaded him to give his archives to the Academy, which led to Smart discovering the lost BBC scores.

Frost School professor John Daversa conducting during the recording of "The Lost Scores" at Abbey Road Studios last summer.
The Frost School's John Daversa conducting during "The Lost Scores" at Abbey Road Studios.

That music proved to be a missing link from a crucial period of Wheeler’s development, when he merged his genius for harmony and melody with his adventurous experimentation in free jazz and growing confidence in leading a big band. British magazine Jazzwise describes it as “a largely undocumented outpouring of bold, experimental, and beautiful music whose conception was made possible only because of the circumstances that coalesced for Kenny at that exact moment.” A half-century later, Wheeler’s “Lost Scores” still sounds exhilaratingly original.

Frost School Dean Shelton G. Berg plays piano on one track, while Daversa and fellow professors and trumpeters Etienne Charles and Brian Lynch are also guest stars, as are Smart and Academy faculty member James Copus. Frost School doctoral student Maria Alejandra Quintanilla’s eerily angelic vocals illuminate two tracks. Saxophonists Evan Parker and Chris Potter and vocalist Norma Winstone, British jazz legends who were friends and frequent collaborators with Wheeler, also brought their insight and experience to the album.

musicians from the Frost School and the Royal Academy of Music at Abbey Road Studios last summer.
Frost School and Royal Academy of Music musicians at Abbey Road Studios last summer. 

The London trip was a rich and thrilling professional and artistic experience for the eight Frost School students and new graduates. They bonded strongly with their Academy peers. They performed at the Vortex Jazz Club, a favorite spot of Wheeler’s, for an eager audience, including his son and daughter. They were awed to record at the iconic Abbey Road, where the Beatles changed pop history, and countless famous artists, from Fats Waller to The Rolling Stones to Radiohead, have recorded.

“Just being in the room, the vibrations in the walls, speaks to the history of being a musician,” says Daversa. Working in such a demanding professional situation was also invaluable, he says. “For the students to witness and experience this level of professionalism, the musicianship required, the expectations, is something they will apply to other parts of their career.”

But the most powerful aspect of recording “Lost Scores” was the chance to be part of jazz history.

The cover of "Some Days are Better: The Lost Scores"

“We got to hear the real live human story from luminaries like Evan Parker and Norma Winstone,” says Daversa. “Not only were they telling stories about Kenny Wheeler and the energy of the music in London at that time, but stories like the one about jazz saxophone luminary Sonny Rollins, playing his horn as his cab pulled up to the iconic London jazz club Ronnie Scott’s, and continuing as he walked into the club. These stories help us understand our musical heroes’ passion, dedication, and purpose. It’s an infinite source of inspiration for us following behind.”

“Putting out this project isn’t just a collection of beautiful music,” said trombonist and master’s student Izzi Guzman of the Wheeler recording last summer. “It’s honoring a jazz artist of great humanity and authenticity.”

“What an honor to be part of this lineage, part of this family,” Daversa says. “This is such important music in this community. It brings us together and shows us how bonded this family is.”



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