Alex Hutton is a British composer/player with a different take on piano-trio jazz to many of his peers – he loves composition, classical and folk themes, and music that can clothe explicit stories. The Magna Carta Suite, inspired by a walk through the Windsor woodlands where the document was signed exactly 800 years ago, features classically pure double bassist Yuri Goloubev and exciting drummer Asaf Sirkis, plus occasional vocals, baroque flute and cor anglais. Flute whispers and Goloubev’s beautiful bowed sound weave through the gently ringing Old Yew; The Barons resembles an Avishai Cohen anthem; The Fog of War moves from a Scriabin-inspired tiptoe to a punchy vamp; and musician/poet Neil Sparkes recaps the whole storyline in two dramatic spoken passages at the close. This is not just a piece of idiom-hopping programme music hooked on to an anniversary: Hutton’s compositions and his gentle jazz-piano hipness stand tall in their own right.
