Iain Ballamy Review: Riversphere Vol 1 – A brilliant flow of genre, harmony and improvisation | music

HeyWriting jazz reviews for 2026 with a story dating back to the mid-1980s might risk alienating the audience, but it was the decade in which a far-sighted young saxophonist on the UK jazz scene, called Ian Ballamy, first appeared on this writer’s radar. The cross-generational lineup and catchy themes of Riversphere, his first solo release in years, are a testament to why he’s been there for 40 years.

In their twenties, Palami and pianist/composer Jango Betts often teamed up as two rebels, deftly respecting the traditions of classical jazz while adventurously and often mischievously transforming them. They were key figures in a talented generation in the UK that created some of the most brilliant European jazz of the 1980s and 1990s, most influential of which were the revolutionary orchestra Los Tubes, which combined musical genres from old-fashioned swing to vaudeville, improvisation and avant-garde rock, and sometimes got people dancing in the streets.

Riversphere likens the interweaving of rivers to music-making flows between genres and individuals and across blurred lines of composition and improvisation. Ballamy’s beautifully percussive, evocative sound on sax headlines a first-rate quartet with guitarist Bill Frisell, Ian Rob Luft, bassist Connor Chaplin and drummer Corey Dick, while the ever-sympathetic Laura Gord and Ballamy’s very promising son Charlie share trumpet roles on three tracks – particularly the group’s wonderfully harmonious finale, Over Time.

The horns and guitar shift from folky lyric lines to raw note bending on the opening harmonica, while long guitar and sax notes drift delicately across softly shifting drum patterns on Unresolved. Frissell’s dreamy, eerie meeting places a slow exhale floating amidst the triple guitar strums, and two longing Chico Buarque/Jobim songs warmly reflect Ballamy’s affection for Latin jazz and Northern European ambient music, and Luft’s versatility as a tone poet and clever postbopper. A second volume is already in the works – an interesting possibility for later this year.

Also out this month

Keyboardist Craig Taborn, legendary reed player Henry Threadgill, and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire are among the many jazz stars who sing duets with the double bass player. Thomas Morgan on the final song, “Loveland,” — but Morgan is mainly playing “the forest” here, his virtual invention that mimics the sounds of mandolins, guitars, rules, and more. The instrument creates a wonderful soundscape, even if it sometimes seems, compared to Morgan’s bass imagination, to get in the way of the two-way flexibility of these conversations. Tom Ohlendorf“Where in the World” (Fresh Sound New Talent) creatively bolsters the young UK guitarist’s regular trio with American Blue Note piano star Aaron Parks, over fast, challenging instrumentation, elegant melodies (all Ohlendorf tunes) and inventive improvisation. The late British pianist John TaylorTaylor’s Tramonto (ECM) is a welcome revelation of the 2002 live recording by the great trio (with Americans Mark Johnson on bass and Joey Barone on drums) who made Taylor Roslin’s popular ECM studio set that same year.