Recording of the Week, Jasmine Myra, 'Horizons'

Much has been said about the jazz scene in the South of England, with London in particular being something of an incubator for current young jazz talent, but as usual there’s just as much happening up in the North of the country; from young upstarts like five-piece Yaatri who fuse art-rock with jazz, to Manchester’s own contemporary champions GoGo Penguin. Leeds’ Jasmine Myra is the latest in fresh-faced jazzers making their full-length debut after years of practising and gigging, courtesy of Gondwana Records – the Manchester-based label home to acts like the aforementioned GoGo Penguin and Mammal Hands. An alumna of the Leeds Conservatoire, Myra originally caught the ear of Gondwana label boss Matthew Halsall back in 2018, after being selected for the Jazz North Introduces initiative – and after two years of lockdown-informed composing, Horizons pulls no punches with its deep arrangements, catchy yet elegant melodies and a sophisticated approach befitting an artist twice her age. And referencing musicians as broad as electronic producer Bonobo, classical-crossover pianist Ólafur Arnalds and Canadian jazz flugelhornist/trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, the influences on her studio debut are broad.

Right from the get-go it seems like Jasmine Myra’s arrangements stretch beyond your standard jazz bands, with the opening track ‘Prologue’ employing an almost spiritual jazz-tinged ensemble of strings, woodwinds, sparse drums and wind chimes – as much care is taken to texture as melody, and even with these sometimes dense arrangements I’d be hard pressed to name anything that felt like it wasn’t placed there with express purpose. Indeed, these catchy songlike melodies seem to be Myra’s bread and butter, even amongst the moodier moments on Horizons she always makes sure there’s something to guide the listener through her pieces. Myra often couples her saxophone lines with that of her flautists, like the opening of ‘New Beginnings’, playing in-sync before Myra diverges into more lively leads and the flutes take a step back into more chord-like accompaniment.

Photo by Emily Dennison

Elsewhere the titular ‘Horizons’ opens with some nu-jazz flavoured electric keyboard against a smooth, syncopated bass followed by emotive guitar melodies; Myra hardly comes in until a couple of minutes into the tune, more than happy for her band to do their thing, assured in not having to play the showman role throughout the entire record – although Myra no doubt has some serious chops, this isn’t your typical saxophone shred-fest, ‘tasteful’ is the key word here.

The atmospheric ‘Words Left Unspoken’ stands as a personal highlight on the record, building up from a motif of interlocked harp and piano before a unison violin-sax lead comes in with a melody that’s almost folk-like in tone. The tune itself is also one of the more personally significant compositions for Myra herself, written in tribute to her grandmother whom she was unable to visit before her passing due to lockdown restrictions, rightly one of the most palpably emotional tracks on Horizons, and its gentle introduction certainly leaves room for contemplation.

As with many projects releasing in the last couple of years, the material heard on Horizons started coming together during 2020 in lockdown. Even so, Horizons isn’t really about the pandemic – lockdown was just an excuse for Myra to really knuckle down and flesh out her compositions, and instead of coming across as a record documenting the isolating experience of the pandemic, Horizons finds this saxophonist touching on her personal life and finding joy in the act of performing again. All in all, Horizons more than proves Jasmine Myra is an up-and-coming artist to watch closely, and I’m far from the first to say it; she’s cultivated quite a bit of buzz behind her debut recording, and in the process of writing this review alone she’s popped up on the front-pages of countless web publications. Praise well-deserved, for sure.