Levitation Orchestra

Artist

Levitation Orchestra
Agent

André Marmot
Based

London, UK
Label

5dB Records

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Levitation Orchestra

Collaboration is key to the uplifting art of Levitation Orchestra. Since forming in 2018, the 8- piece ensemble have pioneered a truly egalitarian, communal form of music-making, honing their experience on the London jazz circuit to release two fiery, genre-spanning albums that traverse everything from spiritual jazz to classical composition, intricate dancefloor-driven rhythms and soulful vocal melodies. “We write everything in the room together, forming ideas with equal input from everyone,” co-founder and trumpeter Axel Kaner-Lidström says. “We don’t write anything down and we don’t bring in ideas we’ve come up with beforehand. Instead, we let our intuition flow and capture the unique talents of each person in the group in the moment.”

Developing their collective creativity through the release of two acclaimed albums, 2019’s Inexpressible Infinity and 2021’s Illusions & Reality, which garnered tastemaking support from the likes of Gilles Peterson, Loud & Quiet, The Financial Times and BBC Radio 3, the ensemble now return with their most complex yet intuitively emotive album to date, Sanctuary.

Across eight tracks, the album envelops listeners in a layered, ever-shifting soundscape, flowing from the meditative bass melody and expansive group vocalisations of the opening title track to the fiery, soaring horn solos of the breakbeat-grooving Embrace, the gnarly prog rock synthesised saxophone and hard-hitting drum textures of Another Way and the introspective, yearning spoken word of Home. It’s a record that revels in the spectrum of sound, from stillness and solitude to explosive movement and communal catharsis, all anchored in the group’s warm orchestrations.

“We worked on the album for three years,” Axel says. “It’s the product of our growing experience as a group, taking time to learn how to bring out the most balance and beauty from an orchestration that might have started as a sung melody but that we have since built into an intricate arrangement. Each song is deeply orchestrated but still full of immediate feeling.”

Axel’s idea for Levitation Orchestra first formed while working as an assistant workshop leader with musical educator Paul Griffiths. Here, Axel learnt the fundamentals of collective composition and sustainable community music, rooted in mutual respect and a non-elitist approach to creativity. “I immediately fell in love with the process, which always found a way to unify talents and bring out the best in everybody,” Axel says. “The only limitation was that once the project was over, you left that music behind and started again with a new group and new material. I wanted to see what could be done if we kept on developing creative process of the same group of musicians.”

Beginning the first iteration of the orchestra with fellow Trinity Laban students like tenor saxophonist James Akers, harpist Maria Osuchowska and flautist Lluís Domènech Plana, as well as the festival community Brainchild and attendees of grassroots jazz workshop Tomorrow’s Warriors, Levitation Orchestra eventually began to come together.

Initially envisioned as a rotating group of players who would come up with new material for monthly gigs, the members enjoyed the instinctual process of workshopping compositions so much they soon solidified into a core ensemble. “It was the opposite of an elitist jazz college ensemble,” James says. “In fact, it isn’t even a jazz band at all. We have members who are classically trained, others who love dance music or rock – it’s a fluid interaction between all these influences to create a joyous blend of new music.”

Through four days of workshops and one day of recording, the ensemble wrote the hard-hitting, cacophonously energetic compositions of their debut Inexpressible Infinity, while a similar process led to the philosophical and pensive arrangements of the spoken word-influenced Illusions & Realities.

Alongside their writing process, the group equally began to hone a distinct and energetic live presence through sold out shows at London’s Jazz Café, Ronnie Scott’s, Studio 9294, The Albany Theatre and across the European jazz festival circuit. “We started to build a committed audience who see our shows as an experience, as much as a performance,” drummer Harry Ling says. “Our energy onstage is infectious because we’re all so happy to be performing this music that we’ve written together. People in the crowd might be rocking out or keeping their eyes closed – the one unifier is that they’re all going on a journey together. And we’re always noticing what works and what doesn’t based on their responses.”

Taking this onstage experience back into the workshop setting post-Covid, the group decided to take their third album in a new direction, one that would mean going inwards. “Every album starts with a conversation on a different theme and for this one, we wanted to create music based around the idea of sanctuary,” Axel says. “We started to see the band itself as a sanctuary and safe space, somewhere people are free to share ideas without judgment and therefore allow the music to find its own way through.”

The result is an organic meld of influences from the 8-person ensemble, encompassing dub to classic rock, trap, the avant-garde jazz of Sun Ra and Pharoah Sanders and the classical compositions of Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Rachmaninov. Home, for instance, sees James ’spoken word poem on the meaning of sanctuary echoed in vocalist Plumm’s longing harmonies, while Embrace meanders from luscious rubato melodies to punchy, soaring solos from Axel and James, Another Way interweaves frenetic drum breakbeats with piercing rock- influenced lead lines from guitarist Paris Raine, and Premedetatio Malorum bounces energetically through a club-referencing groove.

Engineered by Dave Holmes (Nubya Garcia, Gary Bartz), Sanctuary is ultimately a joyous extension of Levitation Orchestra’s community music making ethos. With their largest headline show to date planned on 17 November at Islington Assembly Hall as part of EFG London Jazz Festival and a tour in the works, as well as continued collaborations with youth programs like NYJO and Tomorrow’s Warriors, Levitation Orchestra are fast-becoming a new musical movement – a place where creativity runs free to produce an invigorating, inviting experience like no other.

Levitation Orchestra are:

Axel Kaner-Lidström – Directions in music / trumpet

Plumm – vocals

Lluís Domènech Plana – flutes

James Akers – tenor saxophone

Ayodeji Ijishakin – tenor saxophone

Emma Barnaby – cello

Maria Osuchowska – harp

Paris Raine – guitar

Leif Kaner-Lidström – piano

Hamis Nockles-Moore – bass

Harry Ling – drums

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Levitation Orchestra