Vital Spark (Music of Kenny Wheeler)

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  To Check Out 2026

  Ben

  Jazz legends Dave Holland and Norma Winstone, together with the versatile London Vocal Project, present Vital Spark—an album featuring a collection of Kenny Wheeler’s final compositions that were sent over time to Pete Churchill and brought to life through patient arrangement, deep listening, and mutual trust.

  Vital Spark captures a rare unity between jazz ensemble and choir, revealing a sound that’s both unforced, delicate, reflective and full of Kenny’s character and energy. The music features new lyrics by Norma Winstone, alongside Wheeler’s settings of poems by Stevie Smith, Lewis Carroll, and William Blake. The result is unmistakably Kenny Wheeler: lyrical but unsentimental, harmonically rich yet spacious. For Dave, Norma, and Pete, this project is not a retrospective but a personal, shared act of remembering and reinterpreting, shaped by decades of friendship, collaboration, and quiet reverence for one of the most singular voices in modern music.