The Celtic Wheel of the Year Suite review

Josephine Davies & The Ensō   Ensemble

“The Celtic Wheel of the Year Suite”

(Ubuntu Music UBU0180)

Josephine Davies – composer, conductor, tenor saxophone

Mike Chillingworth – alto & soprano saxophones
Rachael Cohen – alto saxophone
Helena Kay – tenor saxophone
Adam Bishop – tenor saxophone, flute, clarinet
Tamar Osborn – baritone saxophone, bass clarinet
Noel Langley – trumpet, flugelhorn
Rueben Fowler – trumpet, flugelhorn
Nick Smart – trumpet, flugelhorn
Robbie Robson – trumpet, flugelhorn
Anna Drysdale – french horn
Olli Martin – trombone
Maddie Dowdeswell – trombone
Eddie Fowler – bass trombone
Alcyona Mick – piano
Dave Whitford – double bass
Shane Forbes – drums

Saxophonist and composer Josephine Davies has been a regular presence on The Jazzmann web pages, mainly through her work with her long running trio Satori, featuring bassist Dave Whitford and drummer James Maddren. The trio’s albums “Satori” (2017), “In the Corners of Clouds” (2018) and “How Can We Wake?” (2020)  are all favourably reviewed elsewhere on this site, as is an excellent live performance by the trio at the 2018 Brecon Jazz Festival.

The 2024 Satori release “Weatherwards” saw the core trio augmented on some tracks by pianist Alcyona Mick. Like its predecessors the album appeared on the Whirlwind Recordings label. My review of this recording, from which much of the following biographical details has been sourced, can be found here.
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/satori-weatherwards

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. In 2019 she was the recipient of the Parliamentary Jazz Award for Best Instrumentalist.

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, Terry Seabrooke and Hans Koller, bassists Dominic Howles and Charlie Pyne, trumpeter Loz Speyer, harpist Maria-Christina Harper and multi-instrumentalist Adam Glasser and also with the band Collocutor, led by saxophonist/flautist Tamar Osborn. 

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”. She also plays with Pack’s own quartet.

Davies and Bishop also play together in Very Tiny Toads, an organ trio that also features keyboard player Tim Wells.

Davies’ 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’  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. Prior to forming  Ensō  Davies was the resident composer and tenor saxophonist with the London Jazz Orchestra from 2011 to 2016, her experiences in that role invaluable in the success of this current project.

The Ensō  Ensemble’s long awaited debut album appears on the Ubuntu Music imprint and is comprised of an eight movement suite, which Davies describes as being “ inspired by the Celtic Wheel of the Year, an ancient pagan celebration of the changing seasons and the interplay of light and dark”.  Alternatively known as “The Ascension Suite” the work was officially launched with two live performances at The Vortex on 20th December 2024, the date of the Winter Solstice. “It seemed fitting”, explains Davies.

On her Bandcamp page Davies says of the work;
“The Suite brings a much-needed celebration of nature, connection, and renewal to our fragmented times. It begins at Summer Solstice, the longest and lightest day of the year and moves through the metaphorical and literal wheel, becoming increasingly dark and tenebrous, before returning at the end of the cycle back to light and luminosity. Allow the music to move you through the whole spectrum of emotional realms, from stormy and sombre to exuberant and euphoric.”

On the Ubuntu Music website she states;
“An eclectic listener, I love the spirit of improvisation and spontaneity inherent in jazz, as well as the subtly considered precision of orchestral writing. I am on a continuous quest to blend these elements in a way that is both surprising and inevitable, challenging yet richly satisfying. Ultimately the album is a hymn to the beauty, power, and grace (if I may use such an old-fashioned word) of this magnificent earth.”

As stated by Davies the suite commences with “Eos (Summer Solstice)”, which features rich horn voicings and an arrangement that is full of colour and textural interest. There’s a suitably bright and luminous quality about the music and the performance includes a sparkling piano solo from Alcyona Mick and a brightly toned and increasingly incisive alto sax excursion from Davies’ fellow Shetlander Rachael Cohen. As a composer Davies impresses with her command of dynamics and her classical background, allied to her work with the London Jazz Orchestra, has clearly benefited her here.

“Lammas” is a celebration of the harvest and Davies’ writing is suitably rich, lush and bountiful. The rhythm section sits out entirely and the piece is performed exclusively by the horns, notably the brass. It features the warmly rounded sounds of trumpets and trombones and incorporates a fluent flugelhorn solo from Nick Smart.

The pace picks up with “Mabon”, the title derived from a pagan festival that takes place at the time of the autumn equinox. Introduced by Whitford at the bass the piece has something of a Charles Mingus feel to it with a bluesy, rumbustious horn chart that features a series increasingly garrulous exchanges between the leader’s tenor and Olli Martin’s trombone, driven along by the powerful rhythms generated by Whitford and drummer Shane Forbes. It’s the most rousing and upbeat piece thus far and must represent something of an audience favourite at the Ensemble’s live dates.

The pagan festival of “Samhain” takes place on ist November and ushers in the “darker half of the year”. Davies’ composition is suitably sombre but strangely beautiful. It features the sound of Chillingworth’s soprano sax dancing and squiggling above a dirge like backdrop, with the rhythm section sitting out at first. When they do finally come crashing in Chillingworth’s playing becomes more impassioned, his soprano piercing the encroaching darkness like the flames of a bonfire. There’s a Jan Garbarek quality about his playing, a reminder perhaps of Shetland’s close cultural links to Scandinavia.

“Gaia’s Breath (Winter Solstice)” continues the sombre mood with Robbie Robson’s trumpet brooding gently above dark hued horn textures and Mick’s almost subliminal pianistic rumble. With the addition of Forbes’ drums the music gathers momentum and becomes less austere, winter has its own beauty. There’s a more reflective moment mid tune as Robson duets with Mick at the piano before continuing his solo in the company of the full ensemble. But winter can be turbulent and stormy too, as depicted in a volcanic drum feature from Empirical’s Shane Forbes. Like the season itself this is an atmospheric and episodic piece that goes through several different phases and evokes many different moods, before eventually ending in much the same manner as it began.

“Imbolc”,in the Christian tradition known as St. Brigid’s Day, is a festival that takes place on 1st February to herald the coming of spring. At just over a minute and a half in duration it represents the album’s shortest piece and is played sans rhythm,  an ensemble performance by the horns with lush colours and textures suggestive of the coming warmth of spring juxtaposed with deeper, darker sonorities reminding us that we are still in the depths of winter.

“Ostara” is a pagan festival that takes place on March 21st, the day of the spring equinox. Some of its traditions have subsequently been co-opted into the Christian Easter. Ushered in by Whitford’s bass this is the piece where the annual rebirth of nature is truly celebrated in a richly colourful arrangement featuring rousing big band passages and the fluent tenor sax soloing of Helena Kay.

The suite concludes with “Beltane”, a pagan festival that is held on the first of May to celebrate the coming of summer. Davies’ composition is rich, lush and pastoral with warm horn textures complemented by Mick’s lyrical piano soloing.

“The Celtic Wheel of the Year Suite” features a truly stellar cast of musicians and they all perform brilliantly, both individually and collectively. But ultimately the triumph is that of Davies in her role as composer and conductor. Her compositions are intelligent and evocative and her arrangements and orchestrations rich, wide ranging and colourful, allowing Davies to bring out the best from her hand picked cast of musicians.

“The Celtic Wheel of the Year Suite” is a superb achievement that takes its place in an impressive line of large ensemble recordings in British jazz, following in the rich tradition of such musician / composers as Tubby Hayes, Stan Tracey, Kenny Wheeler, Michael Garrick, John Taylor and Mike Gibbs and with Julian Siegel’s “Tales of the Jacquard” perhaps representing a notable more recent example.

The opportunities to see this music being performed live are likely to be limited, but let’s hope that Davies will be able to present this music again at some point, possibly at one of the UK’s major jazz festivals. I’d love to be there when it happens.