When Norma Winstone, the peerless English vocalist and lyricist, reached 80 in 2021 – still in entrancing voice – a cascade of tributes included one from ECM Records boss Manfred Eicher, legendary master of doing more with less in new music: “She hears things differently, and tells us about them in her own quiet way.” Winstone’s confiding storytelling could have struggled in a noisy world, but landmark albums, the accolades of peers and fans and an MBE have confirmed its soft power across 60 years. So does the release of A Timeless Place, a long-archived 1990 radio broadcast with Winstone fronting Hanover’s NDR Radio Orchestra.
The title track is her much-covered lyric (Mark Murphy, Jazzmeia Horn and Cécile McLorin Salvant have explored it) to pianist Jimmy Rowles’ lovely tune The Peacocks. Glimpsed happiness, missed chances and the sounds and colours of emotions (“I’m drowning now, slowly sinking in a sea of blue and green”) typify Winstone’s materials, and her lustrous low sounds and vaulting octave leaps constantly mutate the implications of words.
