Touring with Pat Metheny this year pianist-composer Gwilym Simcock features on a new release from the veteran classical music group Delta Saxophone Quartet to be issued by London indie-jazz label Basho Records in late-February.
Titled Crimson! following an earlier prog foray the quartet undertook themed around the music of Soft Machine, this latest album from Delta is a tribute to prog rock goliaths King Crimson and involves the commission of new input from Simcock.
The quartet’s Chris Caldwell and long-time Impossible Gentleman Simcock bonded at a Stoke City Europa Cup football match, according to label blurb found on Amazon UK who are displaying a 26 Feb release date. Simcock subsequently got to grips with the commission and appeared with the quartet premièring the material live at a festival in Guildford last year.
Tracks are ‘A Kind of Red,’ a reference surely to 1974’s Red folding in for the naming at least within its mantle a riff on classic Miles; ‘VROOOM/Coda: Marine 475’ both pieces that crop up on the Crims’ 2001 album Vroom Vroom; ‘The Night Watch’ cropping up on Starless and Bible Black released in 1974; ‘Dinosaur’ [Thrak]; ‘Two Hands’ from the KC 1980s album Beat and ‘The Great Deceiver’, no not about avowed Crimson fan Tony Blair, but instead a piece also harking back to Starless.
There’s a promotional video about the project top, a photo of the quartet with Gwilym Simcock above middle, and the album cover is immediately above