Liam Noble launches his new solo piano album A Room Somewhere with two special evenings this month at the Vortex in east London.

On the first of these nights on 22 April special guest Paul Clarvis joins his fellow Pigfootian in the second set; while the following night the pianist is joined by US avant pianist Myra Melford, and a quintet featuring trumpeter Chris Batchelor.

The album itself, Amazon are indicating, will be released on CD issued by Basho Records in late-May, its title linking to the lyric of Lerner and Loewe’s song ‘Wouldn’t It Be Loverly’ from My Fair Lady the second of the 13 tracks, as in All I want is a room somewhere/Far away from the cold night air.

Recorded in Wales in September 2014, this will be Noble’s first solo piano album in 20 years, that last occasion 1995 FMR release Close Your Eyes.

In the brief sleeve note Noble, known for his work earlier in his career with Stan Sulzmann, and Christine Tobin and as recently as last Halloween played the Vortex with Scots jazz legend Bobby Wellins continuing a long playing relationship, refers to the first album in passing maintaining self-effacingly that he would like to claim that A Room Somewhere “marks some kind of ‘breathrough’ artistically but it doesn’t. I am mostly interested in what I was interested in then, but with the benefit of experience.”

Noble goes on to explain that he decided on including tunes for their “particular technical challenges, their familiarity, for sentimental reasons or simply because they seemed unlikely choices for a solo piano record.”

Extracts from A Room Somewhere

Bookended by his own tune ‘Major Major’ and Elgar’s ‘Salut D’Amour’, a photograph of the pianist accompanied by a colourful fluffy bird the clock above their heads indicating six minutes past twelve, three more of this Oxford University and Guildhall-educated jazz musician’s compositions: ‘Now’, ‘Now and Then (overdub)’ and ‘I Wish I Played Guitar’ are also included. Kenny Wheeler’s ‘Sophie’ (from 1990s album Music for Large and Small Ensembles), and evergreens ‘There is No Greater Love’, ‘Body and Soul’ and ‘Round Midnight’ are among the remaining repertoire.

Stephen Graham

Liam Noble, above. More information about the Vortex nights may be found here