Nat Birchall - AFRO TRANE (May 27, 2022)

Third all-solo outing from Nat Birchall. This time Nat pays homage to the patron saint of the tenor saxophone, John Coltrane. With a balanced programme of original songs and John Coltrane compositions the album focusses on the more Afrocentric aspects of the music.

1. Acknowledgement (A Love Supreme Pt 1)

2. Trane's Garden

3. India

4. Afro Trane

5. Dahomey Dance

6. Folk Song For Trane

Nat Birchall - Tenor & soprano saxophones, bass clarinet, zurna, piano, Korg Minilogue, harmonium, bass, drums, hand drums, mbira, percussion

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Nat Birchall - Ancient Africa (August 27, 2021)

Hailed by Gilles Peterson as “one of the best musicians in the UK”, saxophonist Nat Birchall remains one of the UK’s hidden jazz treasures. Playing tenor and soprano saxophones, he is a band leader, composer and arranger ( and occasional DJ ) who has grabbed listeners attention with his soulful sound and inspirational spiritual music.

1. Ancient Africa

2. Paladins

3. Mirror Mi

4. Song For John Blanke

5. Malidoma

6. Ancestral Dance

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Nat Birchall - Sounds Almighty (Nat Birchall meets Al Breadwinner) June 15, 2018

Instrumental Roots Reggae Dub LP featuring legendary Jamaican trombonist Vin Gordon a.k.a. Don Drummond Junior a.k.a. Trammy (Real Rock, Heavenless, Bob Marley & The Wailers, Burning Spear, Yabby You etc etc. All original tunes recorded old school style on vintage analogue equipment and mixed by dub master Al Breadwinner at the Bakery Studio in Manchester.

1. Youth Iron Rock

2. Ancient Wisdom

3. Wisdom Dub

4. Freedom Style

5. Freedom Skank

6. In The Hills

7. Higher Region In Dub

8. Igziabeher

9. Amlak Dub

10. Hail Don D Jr

Nat Birchall - Tenor sax, Bass, Hand drums, Organ, Piano, Percussion

Vin Gordon - Trombone

David Fulwood - Trumpet

Al Breadwinner - Drums, Guitars, Organ, Piano, percussion

Stally - Baritone Sax

KT Lowry - Trumpet on A2 & A3

Nat Birchall - Cosmic Language (JAZZMAN RECORDS 2018)

Cosmic Language sees the UK-based saxophonist, composer and arranger return to Jazzman Records with a cross-cultural approach: an exploration of the parallel musical paths of jazz and Indian ragas. Here he takes influence from spiritual jazz forebears such as Alice Coltrane and Yusef Lateef and introduces the Indian harmonium to his band, where it takes the place of the piano. Making new connections to realise his transcendental ambitions, it's a logical next step in making music as spiritual cleanser. 

The idea for the album was spawned from a one-off performance at a meditation centre, the Maharishi Golden Dome in West Lancashire. Seeking to bring a band set-up that was fitting to the quiet-minded setting, Birchall brought the harmonium with him. A small pump organ, it's an instrument he'd been in possession of for many years but hadn't previously used in his music. Building on the spiritual context of that show, and the associations of that instrument, it led naturally to the musical approach undertaken on the album. 

Both the album and the show which preceded it were recorded with the same tight-knit group of players which have featured on Birchall's previous albums. All members of the group are part of the same like minded circle of Manchester-oriented jazz musicians, sharing stages and acquaintances with the likes of Matthew Halsall (a longtime collaborator with Birchall) and GoGo Penguin. 

Birchall has always channeled wide-ranging ideas into music that's simple to understand, and this album is no exception. Album opener 'Man From Varanasi' is an ode to Bismillah Khan, one of Birchall's heroes of Indian music who hailed from the northern Indian city named in the title. It also sees him taking cues from the Indian raga tradition which, as with most other traditional Indian music, is a foundation which underpinned Khan's music. 

Crucially, the ragas tap into the idea of of music as a means of spiritual release. As Birchall explains, The whole act of making music is a spiritual experience. It's during performance and when playing music that I look for a kind of truth. It's with music where I find myself feel closest to attaining that 'enlightened' kind of feeling. On rare occasions I've actually felt as though I was listening to the music being played rather than being involved in making it, almost like an out-of-body experience. 

This natural feeling comes from Birchall's attitude toward jazz music. He sees it as an essential part of day-to-day life: instead of brightly-lit, occasional entertainment in lugubrious concert halls, he considers it an everyday, vital source of inspiration. At a moment where jazz-influenced music is undergoing creative renewal and wider appreciation, it's an important perspective that's found resonance elsewhere. His experiences and the world around him are filtered through his music, and he looks to have his music – be it live or on record – absorbed in the same quotidian way. To me, it's an integral part of society, an everyday thing, he says. You should hear the music every day. 

1. Man From Varanasi

2. Humility

3. A Prayer For

4. Dervish

Bass – Michael Bardon

Drums, Percussion – Andy Hay

Harmonium – Adam Fairhall

Tenor Saxophone, Percussion – Nat Birchall

Nat Birchall - Creation / Guiding Spirit / Akhenaten (2016) 3 CD

The music of Nat Birchall joins with a long-flowing conversation in jazz. His chosen tongue is that of the spiritualised musical discourse whose vital source can be found in the sacred testaments of John Coltrane, and which was channelled most directly by his fellow travellers Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders, and his wife Alice. Many others followed where Coltrane led, giving voice in music to the esoteric renewal of the soul and mind that lent spiritual strength to the black counterculture, and complemented the political radicalism of the late 1960s and 1970s.

This rich vein of spirit music has rarely been tapped by British jazz musicians, and Birchall is one of the few to have been drawn to it with the conviction of heart that it demands. For these are the sonic and spiritual spaces where the colossi of an earlier age declaimed and confessed with sacrificial passion, from within the flames of revolution. 

Ultimately, it has been the sonic pathways offered by jazz that have provided Birchall with the clearest way to channel the resonances of the higher heights, wherefrom timeless musical messages might be revealed. 'It seems to me that's it's the most direct way of tuning in to this higher source. That music seems to me to display this connection to whatever this higher source, this higher energy, might be. It seems to connect to it the most, more than other music. You can hear it in other musics to a certain degree sometimes, but this seems to be almost purely of that nature. That's what really motivates me the most.'

All music is a spiritual communion - it is a talking in tongues, a present conversation with the past and the future, a dance with technology, a branch held out to a stranger. It speaks to the old and the young in a language that is beyond language, it expresses and elicits emotion and thought at once, it is both bodily and mental, noise and silence, intention and accident: it is the dissolution of opposites, the fleeting noise made eternal prayer, the transubstantiation of spirit into sound.

Music is the expression of unity, in which difference is both accepted and resolved, and from which a mended world might be born. To make music is, as Roland Kirk observed, to talk with the spirits. We are lucky that the music of Nat Birchall allows us to hear the sounds of their world once more.

Akhenaten (2016)

Guiding Spirit (2016)

Creation (2016)

Nat Birchall Website