Peter Somuah – Walking Distance

At not even thirty years old, Ghanaian trumpeter Peter Somuah is already on his third album, all released on the German label ACT.

After a CD dedicated to a modern take on highlife—the music of the 1960s in his native country—the musician, who has been based in Rotterdam for several years, returns to a style more influenced by American jazz, whether acoustic and ternary or electric and more binary. To achieve this, he retained the band from his previous album, adding a flute or cello on a few tracks, and varied his own timbres by alternating between the trumpet and the flugelhorn and using on a track a very milesdavisian wah wah pedal.

The eleven compositions penned by the bandleader paint a warm, swaying sonic picture where Anton de Bruin’s electric keyboards serve as the primary solo voice alongside Somuah’s and provide remarkably smooth harmonic support for the bandleader’s choruses. The bass (acoustic or electric), drums, and percussion lend the ensemble a vibrant energy and appreciable refinement, as they consistently cultivate a lively musicality.

On his two brass instruments, Somuah delivers consistently inspired solos, at times languid, at times more assertive. The album, as a whole, sounds both steeped in the tradition of 1970s American jazz and resolutely contemporary, if only because it incorporates a flute and a cello into its instrumentation, adding a touch of lyricism and delicacy to the band’s richly textured sound.

A fine achievement, then, from a musician who knows how to surround himself with the right people and who displays a resplendent maturity born of the blend of his Western and African influences, which give his fusion music a delightful flavor whose charm is hard to resist.

Line up:

Peter Somuah: trumpet, flugelhorn
Anton de Bruin: Fender Rhodes, organ, keys
Jens Meijer: drums
Marijn van de Ven: bass
Danny Rombout: percussion
Heleen Vellekoop: flute
Nia Ralinova: cello