Matthew Halsall - Fletcher Moss Park

Released in October 2012 on Gondwana Records, the Manchester label Halsall founded himself, Fletcher Moss Park draws explicitly on the modal jazz of Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue period and the spiritual jazz of Coltrane, Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders. It helped define Gondwana's warm, pastoral, distinctly English take on jazz that would go on to shape releases by GoGo Penguin, Jasmine Myra and Hania Rani, and remains one of the clearest statements of the label's founding sound.

Matthew Halsall is a Manchester trumpeter, composer and label founder who set up Gondwana Records in 2008 to release his own music and, over time, to build a home for a whole community of modern jazz and instrumental artists. His own records draw deeply on modal and spiritual jazz traditions, filtered through a distinctly warm, English sensibility, and he remains both a working musician and the guiding hand behind one of the UK's most consistently excellent independent labels.