Home » Jazz Musicians » Matthew Halsall
Matthew Halsall
Matthew Halsall: Bright Sparkling Light
by Geno Thackara
Like an author adding a surprise epilogue when you thought the novel was all wrapped up, Matthew Halsall turns out to still have another turn up his sleeve. An Ever Changing View (Gondwana, 2023) offered the musical equivalent of a seaside creative retreat--the kind of vacation that inevitably seems too short, yet would also feel less special if it actually went on much longer. Fortunately there turned out to be enough unused material to make a complementary EP alongside the ...
read moreMatthew Halsall: An Ever Changing View
by Geno Thackara
Whatever view Matthew Halsall is sharing here, it is drawn from life and correspondingly picturesque--not just always changing, but always colorful and fascinating. This View comes partly from the sea-and-sky vistas he enjoyed while creating it, splitting time between England and Wales. Partly, it also comes from a couple of years collecting a trove of percussive odds-and-ends, and cheerfully playing with all the organic sounds they offered. Tinkering with those tones, with no strict framework in mind, he produces a ...
read moreMatthew Halsall: An Ever Changing View
by Chris May
Based in the northern English city of Manchester, trumpeter Matthew Halsall debuted on record in 2008 with Sending My Love (Gondwana), a stylish take on the meditative end of the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders. Halsall's emergence pre-dated by over half a decade that of the London alternative scene vanguarded by musicians such as Nubya Garcia and Shabaka Hutchings, and his trajectory has continued to progress quite apart from it. This is unusual in England, a small ...
read moreMatthew Halsall: A New Dawn
by Chris May
After five years without the release of any newly recorded material, the British trumpeter and composer Matthew Halsall has returned in winter 2020 with a fresh new band and a sparkling new album, Salute To The Sun, on his Gondwana Records label. It is more than good to have him and his music back. Based in the northern city of Manchester, two hundred miles and a lifestyle away from London, Halsall debuted in 2008 with Sending My ...
read moreMatthew Halsall: Salute To The Sun
by Chris May
Trumpeter and composer Matthew Halsall is an inspirational figure on the British scene, as a musician and as the founder of the successful Gondwana Records label. Based in the northern city of Manchester, two hundred miles and a lifestyle away from London, Halsall debuted in 2008 with Sending My Love, on which he unveiled his distinctive spiritual-jazz take on the less-is-more modalism and lustrous sound of Miles Davis circa Kind Of Blue (Columbia, 1959). Since then, Halsall's bands have accelerated ...
read moreMatthew Halsall: Oneness
by Don Phipps
On Oneness, trumpeter and composer Matthew Halsall has fashioned a compendium of pieces that are fixed between spiritual meditative repose and poetry in motion. The collection of seven tone poems was recorded over three sessions in 2008 and are only in 2019 being released. In the liner notes, Halsall explains: I've always treasured these recordings and loved how vulnerable, open and free they are, but I just felt they were too subtle and sensitive to release early on in my ...
read moreChip Wickham: Shamal Wind
by Chris May
British flautist and saxophonist Chip Wickham is a graduate of the fertile 1990s modal-jazz scene in the northern city of Manchester. It has produced some stellar talents, amongst whom saxophonist Nat Birchall and trumpeter Matthew Halsall shine most prominently. But while Birchall and Halsall, who guests on one track on Shamal Wind, have each notched up a decent number of releases under their own names--some of them on Halsall's home town-focused Gondwana label--Shamal Wind is only Wickham's second album as ...
read moreAsh Luo
drumsPhotos
Music
Fletcher Moss Park
From: Label Love Vol. 5: The Jazz...By Matthew Halsall