Bloor Street
MARTIN SPEAKE alto saxophone
NIKKI ILES piano
DUNCAN HOPKINS double bass
ANOTHONY MICHELLI drums
From the UK, e Martin Speake and Nikki Iles, two of our finest improvisers and composers are joined by Canadians, Duncan Hopkins and Anthony Michelli – two of North America’s most virtuosic rhythm players. On their own, each one of these four musicians ranks in world class but as Secret Quartet they become one of the most empathic and musically articulate groups on the planet. Bloor Street is their long-awaited follow-up to Secret from 2002. Dare we say that it is even better? Somehow, the playing and writing is even more intense and authoritative. Somehow, the group’s identity is still more clearly defined and more firmly embedded. These nine tunes come from the pens of Speake, Iles and Hopkins – three individually distinctive voices with a shared sense of how the Secret Quartet’s music should sound. There’s the edgy bebop-inspiration of Iles’ ‘Unit Six’ and the angular, abstraction of Speake’s ‘Make Some Memories’ with some fine percussion from Michelli. There’s Hopkins’ lightly springing, modal ‘Changing Tides’ and Speake’s immediately contemporary and ‘of-the-moment’ title track.
“The collective spirit of the Secret Quartet is seamless and sublime… The quality of the compositions, the incisiveness of the soloing and the collective spirit of the enterprise make this a better album than its predecessor” GUARDIAN****
“It has been almost a decade since the Secret Quartet made their first recording, but they have reconvened in glorious fashion on this intelligent, beautifully crafted follow-up. Speake’s purity of tone and fertile invention on alto is a constant pleasure, and Iles is equally resourceful in her lyrical but tough-minded explorations at the keyboard” SCOTSMAN ****
“Nine originals with an undeniable warmth and quality from four much respected jazz musicians”. DRUMMER MAGAZINE****
