Kenny Wheeler Sextet - WHAT WAS

When Evan Parker first brought these sessions to me, I was struck less by what needed doing and more by how the music made me feel. The task at hand was to revisit the original sessions, extract the content and to balance and master the work. I must say, there was an immediate sense of depth, but also a quiet vulnerability. It was clear that this was not material to be rushed, explained, or framed too tightly. It needed time.

The recordings come from a studio session made in late 1995 at Gateway Studio, produced by Evan Parker, and featuring the Kenny Wheeler Sextet. The group includes Kenny Wheeler, Ray Warleigh, Stan Sulzmann, John Parricelli, Chris Laurence, and Tony Levin. One piece from this session, Kind Folk, appeared on Dream Sequence in 2003, but the session itself has remained largely unheard until now.

Living with this music over time changed how I understood it. My relationship to the recordings was not static. Some days they felt expansive and open, other days dense and inward looking. Returning to them repeatedly allowed those shifts to register without needing to resolve them. That process of returning, stepping away, and returning again is central to how I engage with work like this. It allows space for uncertainty, and for feeling to guide judgement as much as analysis.

What stayed with me throughout was a strong sense of balance. Not balance in a technical sense, but in the way the music holds tension and release, clarity and ambiguity, confidence and restraint. There is nothing hurried here. The performances feel settled, but never inert. That quality shaped my emotional response more than any single musical gesture.

Hearing Kenny Wheeler in this period of his life carried a particular weight. There is assurance in the playing, but also openness. The music does not announce itself. It unfolds. As Nick Smart writes in his sleevenotes, this moment represents a second chapter in Wheeler’s musical life. The intensity of earlier decades is still present, but it is tempered by reflection and precision, qualities that would soon be heard on Angel Song.

What I found especially moving was the collective nature of that refinement. Attention shifts gently between players. Ray Warleigh, Stan Sulzmann, and John Parricelli move through the music with ease, never competing for space. Chris Laurence and Tony Levin provide a sense of grounding that feels responsive rather than fixed. The ensemble seems to listen as much as it plays.

Spending time with the recordings made me increasingly aware of how much trust exists. Trust in timing, trust in silence, trust in restraint. That trust extends to the listener. Nothing is over explained. Nothing is forced forward. The music allows room for presence.

The release arrives at a moment when Wheeler’s legacy is being carefully revisited, following the publication of Song for Someone by Brian Shaw and Nick Smart, and the Grammy nominated Some Days Are Better. In that context, this session feels less like a historical footnote and more like a necessary part of the story, one that deepens rather than expands it.

For me, working with this material was as much about attention as action. It required patience, restraint, and a willingness to sit with uncertainty. There were moments of clarity, but also long stretches of quiet listening. Over time, the music began to feel less like an object to be handled and more like a space to be entered.

What remains strongest is a feeling of gratitude. Gratitude for the care with which this music was made, and for the opportunity to spend time inside it. What Was does not feel like a rediscovery. It feels like a continuation. A moment that had been waiting, intact, for the conditions in which it could be heard.

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