Seascape

Atlantic Jazz Collective

Track List

Details

Atlantic Jazz Collective

Feat. Norma Winstone and Joe LaBarbera

Seascape

Norma Winstone – vocals
Mike Murley – tenor and soprano saxophone
Florian Hoefner – piano, accordion
Jim Vivian – bass
Joe LaBarbera – drums

In their star-studded debut album Seascape, the Atlantic Canadian supergroup—comprised of Juno Award-winning artists Mike Murley, Florian Hoefner, and Jim Vivian—delivers a truly inspiring and timeless performance. The album is set for worldwide release on May 2nd, 2025, via Alma Records.

The group presents stunning new vocal versions of beloved modern jazz originals that showcase exceptional artistic craft and a deep musical understanding between the three members of the collective and their two legendary guest artists, Norma Winstone and Joe LaBarbera.

Seascape is a most fitting title for this recording, for reasons both obvious and not so obvious. The music was recorded in St. John’s, Newfoundland, a city utterly dominated by the sea. Spend a few days there, and you feel the ocean—not only in your eyes and on your skin, but in your bones as well.

Furthermore, the organizing force behind this project is the Atlantic Jazz Collective, consisting of:

• St. John’s-born-and-bred bassist Jim Vivian
• Nova Scotia saxophonist Mike Murley
• Pianist-composer Florian Hoefner, German-born but a St. John’s resident since 2014

Beyond these details, and in a more poetic sense, the sea serves as a perfect metaphor for the music here. The sea represents a journey, a spirit of quest, a depth of unknowability. It roils with rhythm and power; mystery lurks beneath its pulsing surface. It carries risk, just as improvised music always does. And it conveys a sense of almost limitless possibilities, which the best jazz should always make us aware of. The music captured here certainly succeeds on this front—and many others.

Recorded or played live, good jazz begins with good players, but those are just table stakes. Much more important is whether or not the players involved achieve what we might call consensus. Do they think and feel the same way about the music? About rhythm, time, and space? Do they park their egos and listen to one another? Do they serve the music or their personal agendas? These may seem like basic considerations, but this all-for-one, one-for-all unity is not always achieved, even with the best players—and it is particularly important, and harder to achieve, in jazz.

There are no worries on this front, however. These five players achieve a clear consensus from the get-go—the music just seems to flow out of them collectively. In part, this is because they all have big radar and sensitive ears, but also because of some past musical experience together. Mike Murley and Jim Vivian have played together for decades in many settings, including several of Murley’s bands, so there’s a natural synergy at play here.