Opening 2026’s jazz reviews with a story from the mid-1980s might be risking audience restiveness, but that was the decade in which a far-sighted young saxophonist on the UK jazz scene called Iain Ballamy first appeared on this writer’s radar. The cross-generational lineup and captivating ideas of Riversphere, his first solo release in years, testify to exactly why he has stayed there for 40 years.
In their 20s, Ballamy and pianist/composer Django Bates frequently joined forces as two mavericks, skilfully respectful of the classic jazz tradition while adventurously and often mischievously transforming it. They were key figures in a gifted UK generation that created some of the sparkiest European jazz of the 1980s and 90s, most influentially in the revolutionary orchestra Loose Tubes, which brought together genres from old-school swing to vaudeville, improv and avant-rock, and on occasion really did get people dancing in the streets.
