The exciting cross-pollination of music, especially discernable around the sphere of contemporary instrumental and vocal jazz, has become a strong, progressive feature of today’s fresh, creative outputs. Keyboardist and composer Rebecca Nash is becoming increasingly visible in this area of the British scene; a major player in Entropi, Paradox Ensemble and Sara Colman’s band, as well as an educator with the National Youth Jazz Collective, Cheltenham Festivals, Birmingham Jazzlines and Birmingham Conservatoire. In her first major recording as leader, Atlas’s debut release Peaceful King interlaces a panoply of strands – rock, drum-and-bass, ‘70s fusion, soul-jazz and electronica, alongside singer-songwriter influences – into a widening landscape of beauty of wonder. The regular line-up of longtime associates Nick Malcolm (trumpet) and Matt Fisher (drums) plus Thomas Seminar Ford (electric guitar) and Chris Mapp (electric bass, electronics) is augmented here on three numbers by the rich, intuitive vocals of Sara Colman.
