Nat Birchall

Nat Birchall, saxophonist and composer, one of the most authentic voices in contemporary spiritual jazz, presents Path of Enlightenment, a sonic journey through rarely explored scales and modes, from Ethiopia to Byzantium, from ancient Egypt to South Africa.

For this new recording, Birchall deliberately chose the quartet format - tenor sax, piano, double bass and drums - seeking a cohesion and intimacy that allows the music to breathe and tell its story. Joining him are his trusted collaborators Adam Fairhall on piano, Michael Bardon on bass and Paul Hession on drums.

Path of Enlightenment opens with "Red, Gold & Green", built on an Ethiopian scale whose title evokes the colours of the African nation's flag and simultaneously Rastafarian symbolism - a double meaning that runs like a thread through Birchall's entire body of work. The title track is a modal journey in itself: starting in a major key, transitioning through the Phrygian mode, arriving in minor, with a piano solo that unfolds over a 28-bar minor blues form. "Menat" explores a mode of the Byzantine scale, "Amenhotep" - in 5/4, like the saxophonist's celebrated "Akhenaten" - bears the name of several Egyptian pharaohs, while "Spheshile" closes the album with a Zulu word meaning "beautiful gift".

But beyond the modal erudition lies something deeper: these "exotic" modes become a new language for the quartet, allowing them to tell stories that might not have emerged otherwise. This is spiritual jazz in its truest sense: music as a vehicle for inner searching and connection with ancient traditions.