June sees the release of Solo Gemini billed on Amazon as pianist Nikki Yeoh’s debut. 

It is ages since I first heard Nikki Yeoh play when she was quite young, a member of Courtney Pine’s band, a long ago predecessor of Zoe Rahman’s. It was in unlikely surroundings, a long way from her home patch of the proud, so-called people’s republic of Islington. Instead it was in Stalin’s wedding gift to the ‘grateful Polish nation,’ Congress Hall in Warsaw back in the early-1990s. Nikki was an unknown then beyond musician circles and yet she stood out for her virtuosity and flair in the busy amped-up setting of Courtney’s amalgam of post-Coltranian jazz and reggae flavours.

Since then she has flickered on and off on the jazz scene radar and is often busy playing sessions with A list musicians and spending time with her family and above all as an eternally humble student of the music like all the best musicians. She ran a piano trio for years called Infinitum (also the name of the issuing label of her new album) her writing style inclining to suites and grand structures, Wayne Shorter-like at times, the drum/bass guitar playing Mondesir brothers Mark and Michael close musical associates for many years. 

Yeoh paved the way for UK jazz millennial female leaders and soloists. Today high profile piano leaders like Rahman, Alcyona and Nikki Iles have long since emerged yet they are still all fairly rare sightings on the male dominated UK jazz scene.

The opening track on the new album Solo Gemini has a Piano Circus Transmission lineage dating back 15 years. Continuing to quote from Amazon, the only main source so far, there are “eight original tracks inspired by an eclectic mix of influences from Hermeto Pascoal to John Cage.”

Spanning 25 years Nikki herself is quoted: “I started composing aged five in the hallway at my nan’s council flat in 1970s Islington, sitting on A-Zs [they were the London maps published in stout books that everyone used to find their way around the metropolis before the advent of smartphones] that boosted the height of my piano stool so that I could reach the keys. The first significant piece I wrote was ‘Mutual Serenade’ at the age of 18, which was inspired by Brazilian maestro Hermeto Pascoal, after hanging out with him at Ronnie Scott’s.” Yeoh, shortly to turn 43 and herself a Gemini, last year was musical director of “chamber musical” The Etienne Sisters, further explains: “The art of story telling is an aural tradition and is prone to elaboration and improvisation each time the tale is told.”

Track titles are: Six As 1 [a Piano Circus link], Perfectidd, What Kind? This Kind, [title track] Solo Gemini, The Healer, Mutual Serenade [the Pascoal homage], Dance of the Two Small Bears and Elderflower & Ivy. Release date is 10 June. SG.

Solo Gemini album cover, top. Audience footage of a piano duet Yeoh performed with Chick Corea at the Barbican, above