Bobby Wellins/Kenny Wheeler Quintet
The Endangered Species
(Jazz in Britain Records)
★★★★★

THE great Glaswegian tenor saxophonist, Bobby Wellins, was living in Bognor Regis in the 1980s when there was a devastating oil spillage causing the deaths of thousands of sea birds. This provoked him to write his Endangered Species suite, which was recorded with accompaniment of his quintet and the Delme String Quartet in 1989 as Birds of Brazil, orchestrated by fellow saxophonist Tony Coe.

After 35 years, a three-CD set of the original recordings minus the strings gives the suite a radiant new life, with Wellins alongside the superb Toronto-born trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, bassist Kenny Baldock, drummer Spike Wells and the brilliant, underacknowledged pianist, Pete Jacobsen, alongside percussionist Chris Karan.

It’s a marvellous rediscovery, in both musical and pioneering environmental terms. Wellins and Wheeler play movingly in close empathy with nature and each other, making music never more relevant to now-times and imbued with the value of life.

Larry Stabbins/Keith Tippet/Louis Moholo-Moholo
Live in Foggia
(Ogun Records)
★★★★★

ON November 23 1985, at the Giordano Music Conservatory in Foggia, Italy, an outstanding trio of two Bristolians and a Cape Towner performed in concert, creating two long tracks now available on an Ogun label CD.

Pianist Keith Tippett, saxophonist Larry Stabbins and drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo played out of their skins that night, achieving levels of creative improvisation that marks this album as a co-operative jewel.

No-one leads, no-one merely follows. At any moment one virtuoso inspires his trio-mates to powerful roads of instant melody, unrehearsed harmonies and spontaneous short essays of sound that can never be repeated, anytime, anywhere.

Stabbins reveals a truly insurgent originality, as the company he is keeping drives him forward towards brilliantly live renditions. Hear these three polymaths of sound in astonishing unity: Louis’ percussive, polyrhythmic African drum-world, Tippett’s keyboard cosmos of surprise and Stabbins’ audacious horn glory. Momentous music!

Charles Mingus Quintet
Mingus in Argentina: The Buenos Aires Concerts
Resonance Records
★★★★★

THE great bass man, Charles Mingus (1922-79) was an inveterate traveller, taking his insurgent music throughout the world. June 1977 found him in Argentina, playing concerts at two major theatres in Buenos Aires. With him were an all-star line-up, with old compadre drummer, Dannie Richmond, pianist Bob Neloms and two young horns, trumpeter Jack Walrath and tenor saxophonist Ricky Ford.

All members are in prime fettle on this double CD of previously unreleased recordings. From Ford playing Mingus’ tribute to Lester Young, Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, to the homages to Ellington and his pioneering baritone saxophonist, Harry Carney, and a revival of the civil rights lampoon of the racist Governor of Arkansas, Fables of Faubus, Mingus’ fire, beauty and militancy stream through the concerts.

From Argentina’s injustices to the rampant resistance in his own nation’s beleaguered towns and cities, Mingus’s sounds echo with life and struggle.