Dave Holland, Norma Winstone, London Vocal Project
Vital Spark (Music of Kenny Wheeler)

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  • 1. Inner Traces
  • 1
    2. Will You Walk A Little Faster
    Preview
  • 3. Not Waving But Drowning
  • 4. Jazzonia
  • 5. Fuite D'Enfance
  • 6. Vital Spark
  • 7. Infant Joy
  • 8. Heavenly City
  • 9. These are The Things We Trust
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Vital Spark (Music of Kenny Wheeler)
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Vital Spark brings together jazz greats Dave Holland and Norma Winstone to perform some of Kenny Wheeler’s final works written for Jazz ensemble and choir. It features an all-star line-up plus the choir of the London Vocal Project directed by Pete Churchill.

Release date: 20 February 2026

Norma Winstone voice

Dave Holland Bass

Nikki Iles piano

James Maddren drums

Mark Lockheart tenor & soprano sax

John Parricelli guitar

Norma Winstone - voice
Dave Holland - bass
Nikki Iles - piano
James Maddren - Drums
Mark Lockheart - tenor & soprano sax
John Parricelli - guitar (on ‘Not Waving But Drowning, Jazzonia, Fuite D’Enfance, Infant Joy & Heavenly City)

THE LONDON VOCAL PROJECT
Director: Pete Churchill

Sopranos:
Flora Medlicott
Hannah Berry
Katie Teage
Milena Granci
Aitzi Cofre Real
Becca Wilkins
Andi Hopgood
Anni Delger

Altos:
Lilli Unwin
Ineza Kerschkamp
Immy Churchill
Lydia Bell
Jessica Radcliffe
Nicole Petrus Barracks
Ayesha Pike
Nel Begley
Eliana Veinberga

Tenors:
Chris Eldred
Jeremy Shaverin
Sebastian Singh
Dominic Stichbury

Basses:
Pat Bamber
Andrew Woolf
Anthony Marsden
Dani Teal

Engineered by Alex Bonney and Marcus Locock with assistant engineers Luke Farnell and Tris Ellis
Mixed by Alex Bonney and Dave Holland at The Red Room and Earconnector studios, London
Mastered by Greg Calbi at Sterling Sound

Album artwork by Oli Bentley, Split
Additional photography by Alex Bonney
Executive producer Dave Stapleton and Louise Holland

Vital Spark brings together jazz greats Dave Holland and Norma Winstone to perform some of Kenny Wheeler’s final works written for Jazz ensemble and choir. It features an all-star line-up plus the choir of the London Vocal Project directed by Pete Churchill. The result is a vibrant and harmonically rich album shaped by decades of collaboration and quiet reverence for one of modern music’s most distinctive voices.

Vital Spark captures a rare unity between jazz ensemble and choir, revealing a sound that’s both unforced, delicate, reflective and full of Kenny’s character and energy. The music features new lyrics by Norma Winstone, alongside Wheeler’s settings of poems by Stevie Smith, Lewis Carroll, and William Blake. The result is unmistakably Kenny Wheeler: lyrical but unsentimental, harmonically rich yet spacious. For Dave, Norma, and Pete, this project is not a retrospective but a personal, shared act of remembering and reinterpreting, shaped by decades of friendship, collaboration, and quiet reverence for one of the most singular voices in modern music.

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