Quercus is Latin for oak, and oaks are a very good way of looking at this début release from a newly formed trio whose individual names have been up there in lights for some decades. Singer June Tabor (one of Britain’s best interpreters), pianist Huw Warren and saxophonist Iain Ballamy are, in many ways, exponents of an English form of music: folk and popular musics for the darkly toned Tabor; jazz improvisation for the instrumentalists. Quercus, that most English of trees, is a deeply rooted exploration of English music.
That’s not so surprising: Tabor, in particular, has always had a wide repertoire. Here, there are settings of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night verse, ‘Come Away, Death’; AE Housman’s Great War poem ‘The Lads in their Hundreds’; and a stunning acapella version of ‘Briggs Fair’, a traditional song that harks back to her very early career. Warren’s solo ‘Teares’ is a touch of 21st-century John Dowland, while more modern jazzy songs, such as Mack Gordon’s ‘This Is Always’, are places where Ballamy is given his head. This intelligent and lovely album comes with the luminous sound that one associates with all of ECM’s recordings – how it was achieved in front of Quercus’ live audience is a mystery.
