Eternal Spring

Jack Wyllie, saxophonist, flautist, and composer, is perhaps best known as the co-founder of Mercury Prize-nominated widescreen minimalists Portico Quartet and as one-third of the revelatory ambient improvising trio Szun Waves. Yet his distinctive voice on flute, soprano saxophone, and tenor saxophone marks him out as a key figure in contemporary music. A keen collaborator whose projects have drawn on ambient, fourth-world, electronica, and modern classical influences, Eternal Spring is the first recording released under his own name. Featuring collaborators as diverse as former Portico Quartet bandmates drummer Duncan Bellamy and bassist Milo Fitzpatrick, iconoclastic Polish artist Hania Rani, cellist Dobrawa Czocher, and Australian mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean, Eternal Spring draws inspiration both from Wyllie’s love of verdant nature and from the idea of a constant, flickering sense of hope. Its compositions balance elevating melodies with cyclical rhythms while unashamedly reaching for something hopeful and beautiful. Shimmering, rippling, budding, and blossoming-yet still appealingly familiar-Eternal Spring is one of those rare records that reveals the magic all around us by gently removing us from our everyday circumstances. Whether welcoming a new day or painting night skies, Eternal Spring celebrates life and its cyclical nature. Indeed, the music not only demanded the title for itself but also compelled Wyllie to release it under his given name. “I realised I’m ready to own it,” he says. As likely to provoke references to ambient and jazz as it is to classical music and post-rock, the album is united by an essential bucolic sense of renewal and replenishment. It also embraces a wide range of touchstones, from John Adams to John Surman, from Ryuichi Sakamoto to James Holden. Wyllie additionally acknowledges Keith Jarrett’s Arbour Zena, recorded with Jan Garbarek and Charlie Haden, as well as a kinship with South Korean director Kim Ki-duk’s serene film Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring. Having first mapped out the compositions on piano and synthesizers, Wyllie developed their nascent rhythms alongside Portico Quartet drummer Duncan Bellamy, finding confidence in the project’s restorative intentions. Recording sessions subsequently expanded to Saint Thomas Church in Clapton, Max Richter’s Studio Richter Mahr, and finally London’s Fish Factory. “It was like I’d found a natural space between all my projects,” he says, “something I could hone in on.”