Frome musician wins Parliamentary jazz award

A musician who has helped build Frome’s grassroots jazz scene has received national recognition with a Parliamentary Jazz Award.

Saxophonist and composer Iain Ballamy, who has lived in Frome since 2003, won Jazz Album of the Year for Riversphere Vol. 1, recorded locally with a collective of Frome-based musicians.

The album was recorded at Indefra Studios in Keyford, with producer Sebastian Brice, and at Mower’s Studios in Beckington, with Mike Mower.

The award was presented at a ceremony at the World Heart Beat venue in London on 13th October. The awards recognise achievements in jazz, with nominations from the public considered by music experts before the final decisions are made by the All-Party Parliamentary Jazz Appreciation Group, a cross-party group of MPs and peers.

Iain said the record reflected the connections between musicians in and around Frome, where he has spent five years bringing performers together through a regular jazz night at Bar Lottie.

“There is a fantastic family of artists and musicians,” he said. “What I’ve been trying to do over the last five years is to introduce everybody I know and make sure that everybody knows everybody else. I am really interested in connecting people.”

The sessions take place every other Wednesday and have featured more than 60 musicians, creating a meeting point for performers from across the local music scene.

Iain said the town’s musicians had helped shape the album, which explores the connections between different musical styles.

The title Riversphere refers to the interconnected waterways of the planet, which Iain uses as an analogy for relationships between people, music and genres. The record was also named Jazz Album of the Month by The Guardian in January.

“The thing I am most proud of is being able to make an album like Riversphere to make it how it should be,” he said. “This record is about trying to blur the lines between composition and improvisation and tradition and experimentation.”

Alongside his work as a composer and performer, he is a professor of saxophone at the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. He also mentors young musicians in the South West.

Iain has previously received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists and a BBC Award for Innovation.

Riversphere Vol. 1 is available from Raves From The Grave in Frome and on streaming platforms.