Jazz breaking news: Denys Baptiste, Gwilym Simcock, Kairos 4tet, Matthew Halsall and Usonic Nominated For Best Jazz Act MOBO

Of the five nominations – Denys Baptiste, Gwilym Simcock, Kairos 4tet, Matthew Halsall and Usonic – Denys Baptiste’s rewards recognition for his Identity By Subtraction album released last year, marked at the time by a Jazzwise cover story in December. Baptiste is a very spiritual and natural player and his album, the first in a long while, saw the return of a player who has the ability to inspire others to find a new path, and yet draw in freshly created meanings to the magnetism of his musical persona. Baptiste in interview gave a wake-up call about what it really means to be a jazz musician, and delivered some home truths that young musicians everywhere needed to hear.

He had unveiled songs from the album months earlier at Streatham’s Hideaway club, and performing on tenor and soprano saxophones Baptiste, whose previous album Let Freedom Ring! was released seven years before, after he had first made an impact on the UK jazz scene as a member of the late Bheki Mseleku's touring group in 1994 then touching his mid-twenties. As a tribute to Mseleku, Baptiste that night performed the sophisticated and tender unreleased ‘Song For You’ (quoting slightly from ‘If I Should Lose You’) in a set that contained some exquisite ballads and driving, fast, hard bop. Baptiste, from west London of St Lucian descent, brought his quartet who also feature on the album released by Dune which recorded his other albums Let Freedom Ring, Alternating Currents, and his Mercury-nominated debut from 1999, Be Where You Are.

Gwilym Simcock also on the list has already been nominated for this year’s Mercury Prize the winner of which will be announced on Tuesday for his album Good Days at Schloss Elmau. Recorded at a Bavarian artists retreat, the album, a solo piano set, was released by the Munich-based ACT records earlier this year. Simcock, 30, a former BBC New Generation Artist and currently a member of the US/UK supergroup The Impossible Gentlemen is a leading light in a prominent new wave of UK jazz artists to break through and achieve wider European attention. Born in Wales he studied at the specialist music school Chetham’s in Manchester and later graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in London with first class honours. He played in the Proms in 2008 and has also been a member of Tim Garland’s Lighthouse Trio and Acoustic Triangle as well as Stan Sulzmann’s Neon and Bill Bruford’s Earthworks. The MOBO nomination is sure to raise Simcock’s profile once more after the blitz of publicity surrounding the Mercury.

The third nomination Kairos 4tet recorded Statement of Intent for the Cardiff-based Edition records in December and was the follow-up to their promising 2009 debut Kairos Moment, Led by saxophonist Adam Waldmann the line-up on this album differed slightly from the earlier band with pianist Ivo Neame (replacing Rob Barron) as well as double bassist Jasper Høiby, making up two thirds of the high flying trio Phronesis. Waldmann’s mentor at Trinity College, as Selwyn Harris described in Jazzwise, was ex-Loose Tubes saxophonist Julian Argüelles and like him he favours a folky lyricism and song-like expressivity. The band appeared at last month’s Brit Jazz Fest at Ronnie Scott’s to positive reviews in a double bill with Manchester young guns Beats & Pieces.

Matthew Halsall also appeared at Brit Jazz and the trumpeter, who at just six years old picked up his instrument for the first time, as a teenager toured internationally with swing drummer Eric Delaney (who died in July) and debuted as a leader himself with his own album Sending My Love three years ago on his own Gondwana Records label. The album hit the mark straight away and DJ Gilles Peterson got behind the record swiftly with a further release Colour Yes following in 2009. One of the key figures on the burgeoning Manchester jazz scene which has been re-energised by, on the one hand, the re-opening of Band On The Wall where Colour Yes was launched, and on the other, the increasing ambitions of the Manchester Jazz Festival, his latest album On The Go was released in April. Halsall’s music is imbued by the spirit of the late Alice Coltrane and in particular her classic 1970s album Journey In Satchidananda, the title track of which Halsall and his band performed acoustically at Brit Jazz. The act of meditation and Indian philosophy also form important jumping off points for the trumpeter and Halsall owes some small allegiance to Freddie Hubbard in his playing, although the album’s overall sound stylings owe little to retro hard bop. Manchester music writer Chris Ackerley in Jazzwise commented. “Hearing Halsall talk it’s clear that he is not afraid to look back.” Usonic, the final name on the list, is the least familiar. A world fusion band founded by Miles Bould and Scott Firth who used to play in the Peoplespeak band the pair has also toured with Steps Ahead.

Empirical won the MOBO last year. As for this year, who knows? The MOBO Jazz Act winner will be announced in Glasgow on 5 October. Check jazzwisemagazine.com next month for more coverage. – Stephen Graham