CANNIERE,ANDRE/DARKENING BLUE,THE - The Darkening Blue (CD)

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat held for it by a row of ancient trees; you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight, one journeying to heaven, one that falls.”? For his third Whirlwind release, Pennsylvania-raised, London-based trumpeter Andre Canniere shifts in an oblique direction from previous albums Forward Space and Coalescence with original compositions inspired by the words of Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke and American author Charles Bukowski. The Darkening Blue is a sextet project which reaches into the heart of Stephen Mitchell’s insightful translations of Rilke, some of which are conveyed by one of UK jazz’s most expressive vocalists, Brigitte Beraha. There are instrumentally diverse interpretations, too, of Bukowski’s writings, which are illuminated throughout by Tori Freestone (tenor sax), Ivo Neame (piano, keyboards, accordion), Michael Janisch (acoustic/electric bass) and Ted Poor (drums).