2016's winner of "Best Drums" in the British Jazz Awards, Clark Tracey has worn many musical hats over his thirty-eight year career. Having long been regarded as the UK's most accomplished straight-ahead jazz drummer, alongside that considerable achievement he's also a composer, arranger, educator and talent-spotter par excellence. His latest quintet unites some of the brightest young stars currently working on the British jazz circuit.
The catalyst for the group's formation was Clark's in-house tenure as a tutor at Birmingham Conservatoire, an establishment that boasts a formidable turn-out of notable jazz talent. Of the many students he's heard there over the past few years, three in particular piqued the drummer's interest: saxophonist Chris Maddock, pianist Harry Bolt and bassist Daniel Casimir. Around this nucleus the new Clark Tracey quintet began to take shape in 2013. Clark first encountered Henry Armburg Jennings, the band's trumpeter, when he called him to do a gig "and remarked that he was going to be in my next band! I couldn't turn down confidence like that!"
"This is our second album and I believe it documents our progress as a unit over the last two years very well. Each musician respectfully puts everything into the quintet's music and we've now reached a more intuitive level on gigs, which I hope has been successfully captured on this recording. It's a joy for me to watch these really talented musicians mature and develop, and as always it's a pleasure to be working in their company." - Clark Tracey, March 2016.
