Norma Winstone

Possessing an expressive alto that blends lissome agility with original phrasing and moody textures rich in airy spaces, British vocalist and lyricist Norma Winstone approaches lyrics and melody as a direct, rhythmically grounded interpreter who reaches the emotional core with plain-spoken clarity. Her emergence came in the 1960s through partnerships with Michael Garrick, Mike Westbrook, and Neil Ardley. The 1972 solo debut Edge of Time earned widespread international praise. From 1977 to 1994 she recorded seven albums as part of the trio Azimuth with John Taylor and Kenny Wheeler while also appearing alongside Ralph Towner and Tony Coe. During the 1990s she revisited classic jazz material, exemplified by the 1995 release Well Kept Secret with Jimmy Rowles. Later projects included the NDR Big Band recording It’s Later Than You Think and the 2008 trio album Distances featuring Glauco Venier and Klaus Gesing; the same trio supported her on 2014’s Dance Without Answer and the award-winning 2018 collection Descansado: Songs for Films. In 2022 she issued The Soundless Dark with pianist Will Bartlett, and in 2024 she joined pianist Kit Downes for Outpost of Dreams.

Born Norma Ann Short in East London, she relocated with her family to Essex at age ten. As a youngster she studied piano and organ before beginning semi-professional singing at seventeen under the influence of traditional and classic jazz vocalists. The 1960s drew her toward the jazz avant-garde, leading to work in ensembles directed by pianists Michael Garrick, Neil Ardley, Joe Harriott, and Amancio D’Silva, as well as Mike Westbrook. She also performed with saxophonist John Surman, flügelhornist Kenny Wheeler, composer Michael Gibbs, and pianist John Taylor, whom she married in 1972 and continued to collaborate with after their later divorce.

A late-1960s appearance at Ronnie Scott’s club in London alongside multi-instrumentalist Roland Kirk brought her notice in the music press. Melody Maker readers voted her best jazz singer in 1971, the same year she led her first album, Edge of Time, for Decca. She then formed Azimuth with Wheeler and Taylor, a chamber-jazz ensemble that produced several ECM releases beginning in the mid-1970s. As a lyricist she has supplied words for compositions by guitarists Egberto Gismonti and Ralph Towner, bassist Steve Swallow, and vocalist Ivan Lins, among others; her ECM debut as leader, Somewhere Called Home, appeared in 1987.

Additional collaborators have included Jimmy Rowles, Lee Konitz, Tony Coe, Fred Hersch, John Abercrombie, Dave Holland, Peter Erskine, and George Mraz. In 1992 she worked with composer Steve Gray on “A French Folk Song Suite,” commissioned and performed by the North German Radio big band, of which she remains a member alongside Wheeler’s large ensemble. July 2002 brought her the BBC Jazz Award for Best Vocalist at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. That year she released Chamber Music with pianist Glauco Venier and saxophonist Klaus Gesing, and the following year she contributed to the soundtrack for Psychomania with American director and composer John Cameron.

The 2006 album Amoroso… Only More So featured her with the Stan Tracey trio, while the NDR Big Band project It’s Later Than You Think marked her first recorded appearance with that orchestra. Further trio recordings with Venier and Gesing followed, including 2008’s Distances and 2010’s Stories Yet to Tell. In 2013 she delivered Mirrors with longtime associate Wheeler. The 2014 ECM trio album Dance Without Answer reunited her with Venier and Gesing for an extensive tour of the U.K. and Europe.

One of her most ambitious statements arrived in 2018 with Descansado: Songs for Films on ECM, presenting rearranged cinema themes by Nino Rota, Michel Legrand, Bernard Herrmann, and Ennio Morricone, several bearing new lyrics by Winstone. Gesing and Venier returned for the project, joined by Norwegian percussionist Helge Andreas Norbakken and Italian cellist Mario Brunello. Numerous early 1960s recordings have since been remastered and reissued by various labels. In 2022 she and pianist Will Bartlett released The Soundless Dark, setting the pianist’s music and words by British poet Philip Larkin to Winstone’s voice. Two years later she returned to ECM with pianist Kit Downes for Outpost of Dreams, which pairs her lyrics with Downes’s compositions, adds vocals to pieces by Carla Bley, Towner, and Taylor, and includes jazz interpretations of the traditional songs “Black Is the Colour” and “Rowing Home.”