Loz Speyer’s
INNER SPACE
Loz Speyer - trumpet, flugelhorn
Dee Byrne - alto sax
James Allsopp - tenor sax, bass clarinet
Larry Bartley - double bass
Gary Willcox - drums
Press for Live in Leipzig (2024, Spherical Records)
“The energetic chemistry that emerges on this album is often breathtakingly sure-footed ... a gloriously unified collaboration.”
**** Tony Benjamin, Jazzwise
“A thrilling and unpredictable listening experience that keeps you on the edge of your seat, wondering where the music will take you next.” - Glenn Astarita, All About Jazz (USA)
"The writing is precise, leaving plenty of room for improvisation, so as not to close anything off and let the musicians appropriate the scores, with their distinct personalities, and create other spaces where the music can rush in to immerse itself in a story where each note tells a new adventure."
Alain Fleche, La Gazette Bleue (France)
[Photo credit: © Ginny Koppenhol, at Lancaster Jazz Festival, Sept 2024]
"One of the happiest evenings I've heard in jazz for many a long night... Music as rare as this defies description. Go along and see them!” - Karl Dallas, the Morning Star
Inner Space plays Jazz of a rare warmth and immediacy - compositions for improvisers with roots in both jazz and free playing. Speyer’s writing for the band creates space for the group to explore new areas and discover where the music might GO – with a set of Jazz Portraits that celebrate the innovators of Free Jazz, while drawing deeply on the Jazz tradition, back to Bebop and New Orleans. Each piece evolves a life of its own, as revealed in the here and NOW by these five distinctive musicians.
"Three recordings in 20 years for Inner Space ... And the way that the group sound remains identifiable even though Speyer is the only player all the band’s incarnations have in common shows the value of a clear musical vision. That vision ... is currently realised by a truly remarkable quintet."
Jon Turney, UK Jazz News
Inner Space has been blessed with great saxophonists. The latest incarnation features James Allsopp on tenor sax, bringing the welcome addition of bass clarinet into the mix. James has a natural affinity with the combination of freedom and structure that Inner Space is all about.
“A fertile combination of creative talents that benefits greatly from Speyer’s particular compositional approach, using well-deployed written elements to throw out an atmosphere that opens a door for each player to find their own path.”
**** Tony Benjamin, Jazzwise
The 2024 album, Live in Leipzig, presents the band in the heat of the moment, probing and exploratory, finding the groove at every point. It is the band's third album release but the first to feature Dee Byrne and Xhosa Cole on saxes, who joined in 2021; with bassist Larry Bartley, and one of the most happening jazz drummers on the scene, Gary Willcox - Inner Space accomplice since Arts Council tours in 2015 and 2018, and the 2017 album Life on the Edge - in the long standing lineup with bassist Olie Brice and saxophonists Chris Biscoe and Rachel Musson.
"Life on the Edge" (2017 Leo Records) - Album reviews
**** 'Superb outing that effectively highlights the leader's jarring and perceptively constructed compositions.' - Glen Astarita, All About Jazz (USA)
**** 'The integrity they bring to the emerging free jazz push-pull structure of ’Space Music’ pilots the musicians further towards destinations unknown.'
Philip Clark, Jazzwise (UK)
“It starts with Blue Note- and Ogun-spirit, with Spirits Rejoice-mood and Mingus-power… 'Rocket Science' is unfailingly retro-futuristic, tardis-blue, open for everything that was considered amazing in the 60s.”
Rigobert Dittmann, Bad Alchemy 93 (Germany)
'A joyous atmosphere reigns throughout the album, bop rhythms coupled with the pure interaction of the quintet… there are solar moments during which the quintet communicates to the audience its own enjoyment in playing these compositions.' - Vittorio, Musiczoom, (Italy)
'A constant flow of ideas, the horns sometimes jostling busily for attention, sometimes conversing, sometimes singing sweetly together... While you listen, thoughts of influences fall away and you can just enjoy this newly created music for itself. That is the sound of success.' - Jon Turney, London Jazz News (UK)
'Loz has really got his musical concept and the group together - terrific.'
Mike Westbrook (UK)
Album "Life on the Edge" features the INNER SPACE lineup consistent from 2010 to 2019 - and was recorded as the finale to a ten date tour funded by Arts Council England.
Loz Speyer - trumpet, flugelhorn
Chris Biscoe - alto sax
Rachel Musson - tenor sax
Olie Brice - double bass
Gary Willcox - drums
LIVE REVIEWS
'There was something utterly warm and personal about this gig, and very moving. Even though the leader’s trumpet was often to the fore, his role seemed as much to create situations that forced the band to think on their feet or to stitch together different fragments of a tune with frantic signalling as the moment dictated...' - Mike Collins, jazzyblogman (Bristol 2011)
'One of the happiest evenings I've heard in jazz for many a long night... Music as rare as this defies description. Go along and see them! Or get their forthcoming CD...' - Karl Dallas, the Morning Star (Halifax 2005)
REVIEWS OF FIRST ALBUM - 'FIVE ANIMAL DANCES'
'Music of marvellous clarity, buoyed by loping, shifting rhythms. More lyrical than free, and human than abstract, this is serious fun of the first order - recommended.' - Mike Butler, Metro
'Wonderfully vigorous, sprightly music, infused with bustling, fiercely interactive energy. Recommended.' - Chris Parker, Vortex Jazz
Five Animal Dances
The first Inner Space album, released on Spherical Records, 2008
Loz Speyer - trumpet, flugelhorn
Chris Biscoe - alto sax, alto clarinet
Julie Walkington - double bass
Seb Rochford - drums
