Quercus

Forming the British folk and jazz ensemble Quercus are vocalist June Tabor, her longtime pianist Huw Warren, and saxophonist Iain Ballamy. The three musicians initially assembled during sessions for Tabor’s 2005 release At the Wood’s Heart, after Warren—who had previously collaborated with Ballamy across numerous live performances—suggested the saxophonist join the studio project. Following its appearance, that album earned recognition among the singer’s most acclaimed works. The musicians then adopted the name Quercus and spent the subsequent year performing in support of At the Wood’s Heart, generating fresh pieces that blended British Isles folk sources with jazz improvisation and standards. Toward the conclusion of those concerts, Paul Sparrow captured the group live at the Anvil in Basingstoke; the resulting recordings, which contained just a single extensively reworked track from Tabor’s earlier album, were secured by ECM Records for release as Quercus in June 2013. The album received the German Record Critics Prize as Album of the Year and drew favorable responses worldwide. The trio continued presenting concerts across England and Europe while shaping additional repertoire.

They convened again in December 2015 at Cooper Hall in From, Somerset. Sharing production responsibilities, Warren and Ballamy oversaw the tracking of several traditional folk numbers, among them a thoroughly re-visioned “Auld Lang Syne,” alongside three pop standards: Leonard Bernstein’s “Somewhere” from West Side Story, Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice (It's Alright"), and Don Raye’s and Gene DePaul’s “You Don't Know What Love Is,” now an inseparable part of the jazz tradition. ECM issued the completed album, Nightfall, in May 2017.