Norma Winstone


Norma Ann Winstone MBE is an English jazz singer and lyricist. In a career spanning more than 50 years she is best known for her wordless improvisations.

Biography

Born as Norma Short in Bow, East London, she began singing in bands around Dagenham in the early 1960s, before joining Michael Garrick's band in 1968. Her first recording came the following year, with Joe Harriott. In 1971 she was voted top singer in the Melody Maker Jazz Poll. She recorded the album Edge of Time under her own name in 1972. Winstone contributed vocals to Ian Carr's Nucleus on that band's 1973 release Labyrinth, a jazz-rock concept album based on the Greek myth about the Minotaur.
Winstone has worked with many major European musicians and visiting Americans, as well as with most of her peers in British jazz, including Garrick, John Surman, Michael Gibbs, Mike Westbrook and her former husband, the pianist John Taylor. With Taylor and trumpeter Kenny Wheeler she performed and recorded three albums for ECM as a member of the trio Azimuth between 1977 and 1980; their fifth and last album How It Was Then… Never Again was given four stars by DownBeat magazine. In addition, she made albums with the American pianists Jimmy Rowles and Fred Hersch.
In February 2018, Winstone released Descansado: Songs for Films, a collection that AllMusic described as "an unusual and provocative album".

Awards and honors

As leader

With Azimuth
With Eberhard Weber
With Kenny Wheeler