Jazz
Andy Sheppard releases «Salt Catchers» on 11 September, recorded as a trio with Italian pianist Rita Marcotulli and French double bassist Michel Benita. The record is out on ECM and was recorded without drums or percussion.
The British saxophonist and composer explains he’s known both musicians for a long time but had never recorded with them before, and that his motto is that melody comes before everything else.
In the conversation with JazzTimes where he discussed it, Sheppard also revisits a part of his biography that rarely makes it into press notes. Before his first record deal, he spent five years in Paris literally playing on the street to survive, after discovering that London’s streets weren’t paved with gold the way he and his Sphere bandmates had imagined. His return coincided with the explosion of British jazz around the Antilles label, the same one that released Courtney Pine.
Sheppard has played in the big bands of Gil Evans, George Russell and Carla Bley, and recorded four trio albums with Bley herself and Steve Swallow — including «Andando el Tiempo» (2016) — who was also his first producer.
Under his own name he’s released, among others, «Movements in Colour» (2009), «Surrounded by Sea» (2015) and «Romaria» (2018).
Text by Aina Torrents