Natural jazz: Rivers and Lakes by Sam Green

MARK TURNER relishes the warm, melancholy of jazz drummer-turned composer Sam Green

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SAM GREEN is a young drummer and composer, originally from Leeds, but who prolifically works the busy jazz scene in Cardiff. 

On this debut album, he’s joined by fellow graduates of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama’s jazz school. While jazz fans in south Wales may be very familiar with Green’s drumming talent, it’s his skills as a composer which take the high ground here.

There is a Wordsworthian trend among young jazz musicians, especially those from the northern parts of Britain, to produce music devoted to nature, in particular British nature. 

Matthew Halsall (Manchester), Fergus MacReadie (Glasgow) Jasmine Myra (London and Leeds) and Other Oceans Quartet (London), all principally urban artists, are drawn to the drama and calm of the countryside and heavily influenced by the European jazz of the likes of the Portico Quartet. This seems to be a collective statement, almost anti-commercial in intent, a movement of jazz Romantics maybe.

Green’s six-piece collective have produced a mature album, unifying themes of nature and its connection with human emotions. They describe themselves as a collective in the poetic prose on the album sleeve and that is how they play, with Green’s generous and modest leadership very understated. 

Unusually, there are two tenor sax players, Daniel Vause and Em Craig. It’s hard to distinguish which of these saxophonists are playing, but they bring an entirely fitting warm melancholy, redolent of Joshuah Redman, and are the emotional hook to bring you deeper into the subtle rhythms at play.

Standout tracks for me are Forest Song, where the music somehow manages to describe the stages of grief when a loss is suffered. At first the quiet insistent rhythms nag away like the cruel continuation of life under the pain of loss, but the same rhythms gradually transform into the conveyor belt of hope and recovery. 

Mountains and Mist and Haystacks are also very evocative. But unlike MacReadie’s blend of classical, folk and jazz, Green has succeeded in achieving similar feelings while remaining firmly in contemporary jazz.

Rivers and Lakes is available to buy from SamGreenMusic.uk and/or download from bandcamp

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