Ensemble C: Every Journey
Adhyaropa Records
Though her image adorns the outer panels of Every Journey, Claire Cope's listed on the back cover as no less or more important than the other ten players—even if a credit in smaller type cites her as the album's sole composer. But make no mistake: with Cope as the album's writer, arranger, pianist, and bandleader, Every Journey is inarguably her project and a tremendous realization of her vision. The album arrives five years after Ensemble C's debut Small World and brings with it a significant advance in those aforementioned facets. Having expanded the group from seven to eleven pieces, Cope here explores a greater range of timbral possibilities and refines her identity as a composer.
She isn't coy about acknowledging the inspirations behind the album and cites the Maria Schneider Orchestra, the early Pat Metheny Group, and Michael Brecker's 2004 Quindectet album Wide Angles as reference points. Consistent with that, the album's eight performances often recall the orchestral sweep of Schneider's music and the soaring melodic uplift of Metheny's, and Cope isn't afraid to construct ambitious set-pieces that in five cases push past the ten-minute mark. However, never does the British composer's material play like an imitation or pastiche; instead, Every Journey resonates with the sound of an artist who, like any, has absorbed influences and nurtured her own voice. Recorded at Manchester's Low Four Studios in January 2024, Every Journey is a spectacular adventure that seamlessly embeds inspired jazz soloing within sophisticated through-composed structures.
Released to coincide with International Women's Day, the project doesn't just celebrate Cope's own journey, however, but those of other visionary and pioneering women. Two books by Jacki Hill-Murphy were pivotal to the album's development, the first, Adventuresses, featuring stories of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century female explorers, and the second, The Extraordinary Tale of Kate Marsden, which recounts the saga of a Victorian nurse who traveled across pre-revolutionary Russia in search of a possible cure for leprosy. As critical, obviously, to the recording are the contributions of Cope's bandmates, specifically Freddie Gavita (trumpet), Mike Soper (trumpet, flugelhorn), Anoushka Nanguy (trombone), Matt Carmichael (tenor sax), Rob Cope (bass clarinet, baritone sax, flute), Brigitte Beraha (vocals), Ant Law (guitar), Gavin Barras (double bass), Jon Ormston (drums), and Jack McCarthy (percussion).
Fittingly positioned as the album opener, “Every Journey (Has A Beginning)” blossoms gradually from a ponderous intro featuring Beraha's wordless vocalizing into an epic statement of Metheny-like sweep spearheaded by Cope's entrancing piano patterns and Law's fluid guitar phrases. As the ensemble sound expands, the music does so in tandem until it's a thrusting, full-force gale of horns, woodwinds, and rhythmic dynamism. Inspired by the story of Bessie Coleman, the first woman of African American and Native American descent to acquire her pilot's license in the US in 1921, “Flight” grooves hard, goosed as it is by baritone sax and a funky swing, and achieves thrilling lift-off thanks to Beraha's radiant singing and rousing solos from Carmichael, Claire, and Law. Here and elsewhere, the muscular drive supplied by Ormston, McCarthy, and Barras does much to power and electrify the leader's material.
While Beraha's typically represented by wordless vocalizing, she sings conventional lyrics on “The Birch and the Larch,” an extended poetic meditation that builds on a fable called “Leprosy in Love” from Hill-Murphy's Marsden biography. Best of all, the dramatic slow-builder offers a showcase for the near-symphonic textural colour of which Cope's ensemble is capable. Titled after Isabel Godin, the first woman known to have traversed the 4000-mile length of the Amazon River, “Isabel” roars with high velocity, its energy bolstered by Brazilian-styled rhythmic vitality, and spotlights freewheeling solo statements by Nanguy, Gavita, McCarthy on congas, and Rob Cope on baritone sax.
The lovely, Kenny Wheeler-inspired chorale “The Light of the Dark” forms a soothing, horns-sweetened prelude to the album's longest piece, “Amboseli,” a lyrical epic named after a Kenyan national park set against the backdrop of Mount Kilimanjaro. A warm, almost gospel-like tone permeates the performance as it evokes the vast panorama of the breathtaking landscape. Taking up the penultimate position is the celebratory rabble-rouser “That Nabongo Feeling,” written in honour of explorer Jessica Nabongo, who recently became the first documented Black woman to visit all of the planet's 195 countries, after which the aptly titled “Home” completes the journey with a stately, tender expression nicely elevated by an affecting duet between Beraha and Soper on flugelhorn. Cope's music veritably oozes excitement, so much so that one longs for the opportunity to experience her ensemble live to witness the full measure of its impact. The scorching heat the eleven generate during the final minutes of “Flight,” to cite but one example, is alone enough to make the proposition enticing.March 2025