Michael Garrick - VOYAGES - The Argo Studio Albums Vol. I (with Norma Winstone) Michael Garrick

Originally released on the Argo Records imprint, each album in this limited edition 4-LP set is reissued on vinyl for the very first time. Remastering is all-analogue, direct from the original stereo master tapes at Abbey Road. The edition, marking the 15th anniversary of Garrick’s passing in 2011, includes original album art, and is accompanied by a 20pp booklet with liner notes by award-winning writer Stuart Nicholson and an introduction by Tony Higgins, photos and tape box images.

The recordings feature some of the cream of British jazz artists of the period, including Art Themen, Coleridge Goode, Dave Green, Don Rendell, Henry Lowther, Ian Carr, and Trevor Tomkin. Plus, Norma Winstone, who is featured on all four albums.

The Heart Is A Lotus (1970)
Mr Smith’s Apocalypse (as Garrick’s Fairground) (1971)
Home Stretch Blues (1972)
Troppo (1974)

Garrick was a much-celebrated key figure in British modern jazz. A self-taught musician and composer, who would later teach aspiring players at established music academies and colleges, as well as gaining an open fellowship at Berklee in the 1970s. His compositions and recordings have influenced many musicians over the decades. Thanks to fans, collectors and high-profile music influencers, his recordings are continuing to be rediscovered by those in the know, and to the new generation of music connoisseurs who have pushed demand and prices up for his original albums.

Since the early 1960s, as well as having its own identity within the jazz genre, Garrick's music has explored spoken word, poetry, and choral works too, and over the years he has composed and performed in small & big band settings. His collaborators and band members in the past included the Jamaican-born, British-based pioneering free-form saxophonist and composer Joe Harriott, Vincentian jazz musician and poet Shake Keane, jazz-free-thinker and Nucleus founder Ian Carr, jazz modernist Don Rendell, and the much-celebrated queen of "Jazz Britannia” — vocalist and lyricist Norma Winstone.