| Jazz |
A Sextet Beyond Categories: The Kenny Wheeler Sextet
What Was, a long-lost session from one of modern jazz’s most lyrical composers and trumpeters, is finally brought to light in full for the first time. What Was is a remarkable rediscovery: a studio session recorded in 1995 that, despite languishing unreleased for over three decades, sounds as vital and immediate as anything already in the extended canon of Canadian-born, UK-based jazz master Kenny Wheeler.
Produced by the saxophonist and longtime collaborator Evan Parker and released on the False Walls label, this 2026 edition of the album treats us to a great and highly inspired Wheeler, 65 at the time, who balanced the reflective maturity of his mid-’90s work with the deeper, more secretive flights of introspection heard soon after on classics like Angel Song.
What Was demonstrates Wheeler’s flavourful blend of post-bop sophistication and free-wheeling improvisation, setting no limits or boundaries, with creativity always being his ultimate goal. The sextet performing here is made up of saxophonists Ray Warleigh and Stan Sulzmann, guitarist John Parricelli, bassist Chris Laurence and drummer Tony Levin. A band whose talented musicians make you navigate with constant pleasure through harmonically rich compositions with a balanced mix of structured arrangements and freedom of interpretation. What unites such musicians is not a common style but a common stance: a refusal to dilute complexity, and a belief that audiences are capable of intense listening. Six exceptional musicians, working beyond convention.
Listen carefully to this album and you will appreciate Kenny Wheeler’s airy and melancholy timbre that touches your heart. His playing favours nuance and breathing rather than demonstrative virtuosity. Even in the high registers, he maintains a singing sweetness which permeates through the other musicians, taking them with him into a musical universe of rainbow colours.
The album’s defining quality, however, may be the palpable sense of collective trust. Even in slow-tempo pieces where space and silence demand vulnerability, the sextet maintains a remarkable unity of intention. Micro-gestures matter: a brushed cymbal swell answering a saxo sigh; a bass harmonic intonation echoing a melodic fragment. These details create the impression of six musicians not merely performing together but listening in real time, adjusting and responding with instinctive precision.
To approach What Was is to encounter music that rewards attention. Certain passages unfold in dense layers of rhythm and harmony; others open into spare, almost suspended moments in which silence becomes part of the composition. This is not music designed for casual background listening. It demands concentration and it is definitely worth concentrating for.
And when the final piece fades, what remains is not just the echo of an instrument or a melody, but the quiet conviction that music, at its best, does exactly what Wheeler did in this session: it stays, it sustains, and it touches the divine.
An album for listeners who believe that art still has a meaning, and that music can still challenge, surprise, and enlarge the imagination.
Frankie Pfeiffer
Editor in chief – PARIS-MOVE
PARIS-MOVE, March 1st 2026
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Musicians:
Kenny Wheeler: trumpet/ flugelhorn
Ray Warleigh: alto saxophone
Stan Sulzmann: tenor/ soprano saxophone
John Parricelli: guitar
Chris Laurence: bass
Tony Levin: drums
Produced by Evan Parker
Engineered by Steve Lowe