Norma Winstone and the NDR Radio Orchestra: Review of Endless Places – an unparalleled musician at her best | Norma Winstone

WHen Norma Winstone, the peerless English singer and songwriter, turns 80 in 2021 – she still has an amazing voice – tax succession included one from ECM Records boss Manfred Eicher, a well-known artist who does a lot without new music: “He feels things differently, and he tells us about it quietly.” Explaining Winstone’s secrets would have been difficult in a world of noise, but popular albums, the praise of peers and fans and an MBE have confirmed his soft power over 60 years. So did the release of A Timeless Place, a 1990 radio recording of Winstone fronting Hanover’s NDR Radio Orchestra.

The title track is his best-known composition (Mark Murphy, Jazzmeia Horn and Cécile McLorin Salvant covered it) to pianist Jimmy Rowles’ sweet Peacock. Gaze, missed opportunities and emotional tones and colors (“I’m drowning now, slowly drowning in a sea of ​​blue and green”) represent Winstone’s instruments, as well as his shimmering lows and powerful vocal leaps.

Studied for years with stellar instrumentalists, his unwavering skills lead to his wordless turns on guitarist Ralph Towner’s skittish The Glide; he misdirects his sardonic song to Steve Swallow’s Ladies in Mercedes; and the heartwarming I Loves You, Porgy mixes the song’s confusion of resignation with hope, just as he does on Kenny Wheeler’s Sea Lady. “I’ve always been staring, I’ve always felt like I was swimming on water and somehow I couldn’t,” Winstone once said. Quietly, this fine piece, inspired by his friend and assistant Steve Gray’s arrangement of the A-list group, captures that spirit. It still exists in Winstone’s work today.

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