The title of British jazzman
Chip Wickham's third long-player refers to one of his greatest fears: That climate change will cause our blue and verdant earth to become a red desert like the planet Mars. That said,
Blue to Red, deemed by its creator to be the disc that connects his own music to the spiritual jazz tradition ushered in by
Alice Coltrane and
Yusef Lateef, among others, sounds not like a musical engine of the apocalypse, but like the spirit of joy itself.
Wickham leaves his saxophones in their cases in favor of his flutes. The
Coltrane reference may be sketched into his compositions, but it takes on physical characteristics through the playing of harpist
Amanda Whiting who, like
Wickham, is an alumnus of
Matthew Halsall's Gondwana Orchestra. The other sidemen include session boss
Dan Goldman on keys, drummer
Jon Scott (
Sons of Kemet), bassist
Simon Houghton (
Fingathing), and percussionist
Rick Weedon (
Mr. Scruff).