Although this is a new project, it's one I've been working on for a long time. From the days of Borderline with Django Bates, Mick Hutton and Nic France, I've been including popular songs of the time in the repertoire. Many of these tunes reflect my personal history, and most have greatly influenced my music-making over the years, so it's a significant moment to have arrived at to record and perform them as a complete repertoire, and I feel I have something personal to say about each one. Whilst I have reworked some of these tunes, our ensemble approach is an essentially simple and improvised one, always taking care to leave the window open for this moment to come in through and transform the performance. When the audience already knows the tune, we can go a long way in our improvisation and still take the listeners with us. I hope that you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed putting it together.

Personal standards ­ the first album on the Homemade Records label ­ was released on 25th October 1999. Predominantly featuring Whitehead's New Standards Quartet ­ Liam Noble, Sam Burgess and Milo Fell, with Arnie Somogyi, Dave Barry and Pete Jacobsen of the Tim Whitehead Quartet playing on Lovely Day and A Shout to Wing, and Davide Mantovani on double bass for My Heart will Go On. Other album tracks include Dancing in the Street, What's Going On, Beauty and the Beast, My Girl and In a Silent Way.

Hear a track sample

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MY HEART WILL GO ON Both my daughters' playing of this contemporary film anthem on the piano at home helped me to hear the evocative atmosphere inside the tune and write some new chords for the verse to suit our interpretation.
8:30 (HOMER & JENNINGS, ARR. TIM WHITEHEAD)engineer: Matt Olivier, Tim Whitehead tenor Sax, Liam Noble Piano, Milo Fell Drums, Davide Mantovani Double Bass

DANCING IN THE STREET One of the songs I grew up with. It always makes me want to dance, and our reworking of it in a 12/8 shuffle makes it a real celebration for me.
7:47 (GAYE, STEVENSON AND HUNTER) engineer: Matt Olivier, Tim Whitehead tenor Sax, Liam Noble Piano, Milo Fell Drums, Sam Burgess Double Bass

WHAT'S GOING ON This is a prayer for modern times.
12:41 (MARVIN GAYE) engineer: Matt Olivier, Tim Whitehead tenor Sax, Liam Noble Piano, Milo Fell Drums, Davide Mantovani Double Bass

LOVELY DAY We recorded this on a beautiful sunny summer's day out in the country at Jacobs Studios, after some difficult and challenging events in our lives.
7:53 (WITHERS & SCARBOROUGH, ARR. TIM WHITEHEAD) engineer: Lyn Gardiner, Tim Whitehead tenor Sax, Pete Jacobsen Piano, Dave Barry Drums, Arnie Somogyi Double Bass

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST This composition features on one of my all-time favourite albums, Native Dancer, a North American/Brazilian collaboration of musicians led by the Brazilian singer Milton Nascimento and the composer and saxophonist Wayne Shorter. Liam, Milo and Sam found a great groove on Liam's piano solo.
9:26 (WAYNE SHORTER) engineer: Matt Olivier, Tim Whitehead tenor Sax, Liam Noble Piano, Milo Fell Drums, Sam Burgess Double Bass

MY GIRL Smokey Robinson's simple love song which seemed to flow naturally out of the previous track in the studio. The playout is my favourite bit...
8:13 (ROBINSON & WHITE) engineer: Matt Olivier, Tim Whitehead tenor Sax, Liam Noble Piano, Milo Fell Drums, Sam Burgess Double Bass

A SHOUT TO WING A while ago, every time I picked up the saxophone the first thing I played was a favourite standard, which, over a period of six months, gradually transformed itself into this tune, whose title is an anagram of the original.
8:46 (TIM WHITEHEAD) engineer: Lyn Gardiner, Tim Whitehead tenor Sax, Pete Jacobsen Piano, Dave Barry Drums, Arnie Somogyi Double Bass

IN A SILENT WAY...captured the imagination of a whole generation of jazz musicians and listeners, myself included, on Miles Davis's album of the same title. But it's Zawinul's original version, with its more lush harmony and essentially European feel that we have used as the template for performance. He wrote the piece

'in Vienna, in a hotel room overlooking the park. My kids were off with my parents, and my wife was asleep. The snow was falling down, and I looked out the window to the park, and took out the paper and wrote the whole thing in a few minutes'.>

5:50 (JOE ZAWINUL) engineer: Matt Olivier Tim Whitehead tenor Sax, Liam Noble Piano, Milo Fell Drums, Sam Burgess Double Bass

Other songs in the repertoire include: >My Song (Keith Jarrett), James (Pat Metheny), In the Memory (Colin Riley), Got a Match? (Chick Corea), Hold Me (Lennon and McCartney), Imagine (John Lennon)

KEITH PROWSE MUSIC PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD. EMI RECORDED AT JACOBS STUDIOS, FARNHAM, SURREY. MASTERING: JOHN ASTLEY, CLOSE TO THE EDGE Recorded and Manufactured in the United Kingdom. A Shout to Wing copyright ® and © 1999 Tim Whitehead ® 1999 Home Made Records © 1999 Home Made Records Manufactured under Licence from MCPS, CD catalogue Number: HMR047 Distributed in the UK by New Note / Pinnacle All Rights of the Producer and of the owner of the works reproduced reserved. Unauthorised copying, hiring, lending, public performance and broadcasting of this record prohibited.

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>What the Press Say

'Personal Standards may well be his masterpiece. His own playing has reached an extraordinary level of musical and emotional expression, and in all eight performances here, he seems to reach a Jarrett-like state of ecstacy, with passionate newly minted phrases and melodic lines. The unusual standards he favours all lend themselves to a funky or gospel treatment, and the very rhythms seem ecstatic. His new quartet with the superb Liam Noble on piano and the marvellous rhythm section of Sam Burgess and Milo Fell.......'

Ian Carr, BBC Music Magazine January 2000

'Tim Whitehead must be considered one of our most eminent saxophonists, and he too has a new CD, 'Personal Standards' ...rearranged by him to create quite fresh and absorbing pieces, always with a strong jazz groove. His own soaring tenor sax playing comes across beautifully in these distinctive settings'

Pete Martin, Jazz UK

'But saxophonist Tim Whitehead has every reason to be proud of Personal Standards. On the whole, the arrangements are earthy, loose and free, leaving a lot of room for fantastic improvisation and band interaction.'

Ben Castle, Musician magazine

'It's Whitehead's tenor which is the all-encompassing star of the show. He combines a lovely lyrical, melodic sense with great drive and sense of purpose, and, as can be seen from his choice of songs, he understands the rhythm 'n' blues that Tamla sprung from, and adds a soulful edge to his sound accordingly. the final delight is a pellucid acoustic rendering of Joe Zawinul's' In A Silent Way - graceful, deeply felt and played with poise and a great sense of completeness. There are some tenor players around today whose public status outweighs their artistry; so let's hear it for a man for whom the opposite is definitely true.'

Peter Bacon, The Birmingham Post.

'But for Tim Whitehead, the saxophonist who has been a consistently creative part of the UK scene since the late 70's and was at one time a key member of Loose Tubes, an openess to accessible melody isn't a late appropriation. Whitehead takes a chance on opening with My Heart Will Go On but approaches it from was over the water, sounding at first like a solitary bagpipe with his spacious Coltranesque cries, and the tune is nowhere on the horizon. When he does get to it, it's to deliver that torchy melody with an appropriately soul-saxy voluptuousness, and the first of several remarkable piano solos by the excellent Liam Noble adds a rigour, decisive intricacy that throughout the disc fittingly counterbalances Whitehead's open, expository sound. The only Whitehead piece, the sparkily boppish A Shout to Wing is so good that it might have appeared earlier - the leader's playing on A Silent Way also keeps some of his most exquisitely sensitive improvising for the end.

John Fordham, The Guardian

'The tenorist on Hancock's date was Michael Brecker, but even Brecker's admirers would have to give Whitehead the edge for soulfulness. He's a committed, passionate player who's concerned with melody and lyricism, and who avoids the chromatic pattern playing of the post-Coltrane school which Brecker represents. This is his first album since 1995, and his first self-produced effort. Whitehead has played new standards at gigs for some years - I remember an impassioned interpretation of Carole King's "Way Over Yonder" at an unprepossessing venue in Stoke-on-Trent'

Andy Hamilton, Jazz Review.

'Whitehead is an exceptional tenor who doesn't sound like anyone else. Idiomatically post-Coltrane, he has a big-toned, vocalised style and a very individual sense of solo architecture which somehow reconciles harmonic surprise with linear inevitability. On this outstanding album, with two working quartets fitting like a glove, he is magisterial;material as disparate as My Girl and a beautiful, rubato In A Silent Way, marvellous performances of Beauty And The Beast and What's Going On both show his and the group's sense of collective dynamics, as well as a lyricism as muscular as it is subtly controlled and expressed.'

Ray Comiskey, Irish Times

"Joy and optimism pervade this entire album which has all the other great qualities – ecstatic rhythms, cunning light and shade, highly focused group performances and dynamic solos. Whitehead ranks among the finest tenor saxophonists anywhere in the world, with a magnificent sound and passionate soul-stirring improvisations, and his two accompanying British trios are also world-class. The unusual standards he favours all lend themselves to a funky or gospel treatment. It’s a delight ". Ian Carr - BBC Music Magazine

'Whitehead revisits the tunes he grew up with (by Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson et al), exploring their harmonic byways and giving them new rhythmic twists. His strong but delicate tenor saxophone tone is always a delight, and with collaborators like Pete Jacobsen, Liam Noble and Dave Barry, the result is a beautifully crafted programme'.

>Dave Gelly, The Observer, Jan 2001

There will be a second release ­ to be recorded in December and released in the new year of 2001 ­ entitled Tides. Personal Standards was described as 'excellent' in John Fordham's April 29th Guardian review of the New Standards Quartet's performance at the opening concert of the Cheltenham International Jazz Festival at the Everyman Theatre. He went on to say that the Quartet 'delivered music at least as absorbing and in some respects more unpredictably distinctive' than the Roy Hargrove Quartet who followed, and was awarded four stars. Respect to Sam, Milo and Liam 'brings you to the edge of your seat'.

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The musicians

The musicians are essentially at ease in this environment because they have strong identities to bring to the music.

Pianist Liam Noble (photo John Ford) is a strong, angular and very rhythmic player, with a well developed structural sense in his ensemble work. He features on Bobbie Wellin's album The Best is Yet to Come, the trumpeter Steve Waterman's CD Destination Unknown, with the wonderful singer Anita Wardell in Why do you Cry? and his own beautiful solo album Close your Eyes. He also runs his own quintet.

I first met Milo Fell when I was appearing as a guest soloist in Stoke on Trent and he was playing drums in the house band. I enjoyed the relaxed yet creative feel that he gave to all the music, allowing it to flow and doing nothing superfluous to that end. He grooves on everything. After a ten year sojourn in Manchester, appearing with the free-playing violin trio Isthmus, John Ellis's Big Bang, and John Thorne's Oedipus Complex, Milo has returned to London to live.

Sam Burgess brings the necessary perceptions to the ensemble to play double bass in a repertoire of contemporary standards. He understands the origins of the material, reflected in the breadth of his career to date, appearing with such diverse talents as guitarist Jim Mullen, The Divine Comedy, on their album Casanova, From the Heart with Gary Husband, The Pet Shop Boys' new album, with Kenneth Brannagh on the soundtrack of his new film Love's Labours Lost, and most recently appearing as musician and actor in Eddie Izzard's new West End production Lenny Bruce, and on several of arranger and producer Richard Niles' projects.

Other Musicians on the Album

Pete Jacobsen, Piano (photo Harry Boxer)

Dave Barry, Drums (photo Harry Boxer)

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