Iain Ballamy - sax Rob Luft - guitar Nick Pini - bass Corrie Dick - drums

Saxophonist, composer and ECM recording artist Iain Ballamy is recognised as “a major international voice” (The Times) and listed in the BBC publication ‘100 Jazz Greats’.

His many career highlights include: Hermeto Pascoal, Loose Tubes, Bill Bruford’s Earthworks, Carla Bley, Cedar Walton, Claire Martin, John Dankworth, Ian Shaw, June Tabor and 'Concerto for Stan Getz’ by Richard Rodney Bennett with the BBC Concert Orchestra. Iain’s quartet this evening also features award-winning guitarist Rob Luft , one of the UK's most prominent and talented young contemporary jazz guitarists, who featured on Iain Ballamy’s latest 5* rated album Riversphere (“an exquisite flow of genre, harmony and improv” — John Fordham, The Guardian, Jazz album of the month, January 2026)

See review in Marlbank here - https://marlbank.net/2025/11/10/iain-ballamy-riversphere-vol-1-babel/

Saxophonist and composer Iain Ballamy stands as a key figure in contemporary European jazz, renowned for his warm, lyrical tone and thoughtful phrasing. His distinctive musical voice bridges avant-garde experimentation with accessible melodic sensibility. His work has been described variously as urbane, original, melodic, freethinking and uncompromising.

Listed in the BBC’s publication ‘100 Jazz Greats’ between Count Basie and Chet Baker his work is contemporary with both strong jazz and classical references and yet un-encumbered by formality and tradition.

Ballamy's most significant contributions have emerged through long-standing collaborations, including the innovative big band Loose Tubes, Bill Bruford's Earthworks, and partnerships with Django Bates Human Chain and the Anglo Norwegian duo ‘Food’. His trio Quercus, formed with folk singer June Tabor and pianist Huw Warren, exemplifies his cross-genre approach. His critically acclaimed recordings span from his debut "Balloon Man" to the introspective "All Men Amen" and the more fusion-oriented "Acme." His work with Thomas Strønen co-leading ‘Food’ on ECM Records' "Quiet Inlet" received international acclaim, as did Quercus' eponymous album, which masterfully blends jazz, folk and chamber music. Beyond traditional jazz contexts, Ballamy has performed concertos with major orchestras including the BBC Philharmonic, Liverpool philharmonic and London Sinfonietta. He has composed for film, notably creating scores for Dave McKean's "Mirrormask" and "Luna." As an educator, Ballamy holds prestigious teaching positions at the Royal Academy of Music, RWCMD and the Guildhall School of Music, where he has developed innovative approaches to teaching improvisation and composition. Ballamy's musical essence combines improvisational spontaneity with a profound appreciation for harmony and form, creating performances that unfold with narrative purpose and emotional depth.

Of his most recent project ‘Riversphere’ Ballamy offers some insight into his musical process: “The complex interconnectedness of rivers and the surrounding environment is defined as Riversphere. This concept shares similarities to the interconnectivity between musical genres, the players, the listener and the performance itself. The collective experience is achieved through a shared flow state. My aspiration with ‘Riversphere’ is to blur the boundaries between improvised and written composition. If the music of this group is the river, the musicians are its tributaries and the confluence, where they meet, becomes the flow state. As rivers and tributaries are infinitely mutable, so are the possibilities for different musical incarnations. By creating improvisations created to sound as if composed and compositions created to sound improvised I try to merge and blur these seemingly opposite musical forms and transcend the distinction between the two embracing composition and improvisation, spontaneity and tradition, the past and the present and everything in-between.”

Guitarist Rob Luft has played here several times with his quartet. He is an award-winning 31-year-old jazz guitarist from London whose virtuosity has been compared to that of six-string legends John McLaughlin, Al Di Meola & Paco De Lucia. He was the recipient of the 2016 Kenny Wheeler Prize from the Royal Academy of Music, and he also received the 2nd Prize in the 2016 Montreux Jazz Guitar Competition at Montreux Jazz Festival. His debut album, “Riser”, was released on Edition Records in 2017 to widespread acclaim from the European jazz media. John Fordham wrote in The Guardian that it’s a “very sophisticated debut, but given Luft’s old-soul achievements since his early teens, we should have heard it coming”.

Subsequently, on the back of the success of his first album, Rob was nominated for a string of awards – Breakthrough Act in the 2018 Jazz FM Awards, Instrumentalist of the Year in the 2020 Parliamentary Jazz Awards and Instrumentalist of the Year in the 2019 Jazz FM Awards. In May 2019, Rob was selected as a BBC New Generation Jazz Artist. His eagerly-awaited second album, “Life is the Dancer”, was released in April 2020 on Edition Records to critical acclaim. Despite the intermittent global lockdowns of 2020, Rob made his debut appearance on the legendary German jazz label ECM Records with the album “Lost Ships, a collaborative effort with Swiss-Albanian singer Elina Duni, and this was nominated in the ‘International Album of the Year’ category in the 2021 German Jazz Prize.

Concert highlights for Rob include performances with artists including Django Bates, The Cinematic Orchestra, Arve Henriksen, & Manu Katché. Rob is a regular member of a multitude of some of Britain’s finest modern jazz groups, such as The John Surman Quartet, Byron Wallen’s Four Corners & the Iain Ballamy Quintet. Additionally, his playing has been documented on a wide variety of albums over the past five years on famed jazz labels such as ECM Records, Edition Records, Ropeadope, Linn Records, amongst others.

Iain Ballamy Quartet

Tickets & tour dates

September