In her first major recording as leader, keyboardist and composer Rebecca Nash’s presents her Atlas group on ‘Peaceful King’, which interlaces a panoply of strands - rock, drum-and-bass, ‘70s fusion, soul-jazz and

electronica, alongside singer-songwriter influences - into a widening landscape of beauty of wonder.

The regular line-up of longtime associates Nick Malcolm (trumpet) and Matt Fisher (drums) plus Thomas Seminar Ford (electric guitar) and Chris Mapp (electric bass, electronics) is augmented here on three numbers by the rich, intuitive vocals of Sara Colman.

The exciting cross-pollination of music, especially discernible around the sphere of contemporary instrumental and vocal jazz, has become a strong, progressive feature of today’s fresh, creative outputs. Rebecca Nash is becoming increasingly visible in this area of the British scene; a major player in Entropi, Paradox Ensemble and Sara Colman’s band, as well as an educator with the National Youth Jazz Collective, Cheltenham Festivals, Birmingham Jazzlines and Birmingham Conservatoire.

Illustrator/musician Ning-ning Li has incorporated impressions of Nash’s eight tracks into the album’s sumptuous cover art. A distinctive electric piano figure announces title track ‘Peaceful King’, whose electronic effects (by Paradox’s Nick Walters) maintain a positivity explained as a reaction to the current state of the world, while free-flowing ‘Tumbleweed’ buzzes and bleeps with a redolence of the Pat Metheny Group. The remaining tracks include ‘Dreamer’ that continues Nash’s penchant for interlocking chord structures and references the cyclic patterns of the late, great John Taylor.