Norma Winstone

Norma Winstone – Stories Yet to Tell (2010)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 52:13 minutes | 874 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

Norma Ann Winstone is a British jazz singer and lyricist. In a career spanning over forty years she is best known for her wordless improvisations. Norma Winstone’s voice melds seamlessly with the bass clarinet and soprano sax of Klaus Gesing and the piano of Glauco Venier. Alongside their own pieces, they play songs from Mexico’s Armando Manzanero to Armenia’s Komitas, to Wayne Shorter…

(more…)

Norma Winstone – In Concert (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 58:43 minutes | 574 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sunnyside

The incredible relationship between legendary British musicians Norma Winstone and John Taylor has been admired for nearly five decades. The vocalist and pianist have been inextricably linked from their early avant-garde work from the late 1960s through their gorgeous work with Kenny Wheeler and Azymuth.

(more…)

Norma Winstone – Descansado – Songs For Films (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 48:35 minutes | 828 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

Norma Winstone has found a dream home with the ECM label, a house in her own image… As part of Azimuth, the trio that she formed between 1977 and 2000 with trumpet player Kenny Wheeler and pianist John Taylor, her husband; or alone, the British artist has always been a jazz singer apart. Here, Norma Winstone brings her unique timbre to the big screen. She covers the films of Scorsese (Taxi Driver), Godard (My Life to Live), Wenders (Lisbon Story), Jewison (The Thomas Crown Affair), Zeffirelli (Romeo and Juliette), De Sica (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow) and several others. With Descansadowhich she dedicated to her late colleagues John and Kenny, she has chosen a great repertoire of scores from composers such as Bernard Hermann, Michel Legrand, Ennio Morricone, Nino Rota and William Walton.

The stripped-down and original arrangements from German saxophonist and clarinettist Klaus Gesing and Italian pianist Glauco Venier give her room to assume complete ownership of this music, which we never imagined in a jazz or quasi-chamber music setting. Norwegian percussionist Helge Andreas Norbakken and Italian cellist Mario Brunello came to round off this team of discerning artists who give this music an utterly fascinating, velvet light.

(more…)

Norma Winstone – Dance Without Answer (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:02:34 minutes | 693 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

The great British jazz singer Norma Winstone once again casts her net wide for source material for this thirdECM album with Italian pianist Glauco Venier and German clarinetist / saxophonist Klaus Gesing. Alongside new pieces by Winstone/Gesing and by Venier, the trio covers tunes by singer-songwriters Nick Drake, Fred Neil and Tom Waits. They take a fresh approach to Madonna’s “Live To Tell”, and to Dave Grusin’s “It Might Be You”, as well as Ralph Towner’s “A Breath Away” (now with lyrics by Norma) and “Bein’ Green”, a children’s song elevated to jazz standard status by Sinatra, Stan Kenton, Ray Charles and many more. “As Winstone moves ever farther from the Great American Songbook,” All About Jazz observed, “it’s certain that, with band mates as sympathetic as Gesing and Venier, there’s precious little she can’t do.”

(more…)