‘Ribbons’: Live at World Heart Beat Music Embassy Gardens

The ‘Ribbons’ album launch was my final gig for the EFG London Jazz Festival. It was great to spend a little time at World Heat Beat Embassy Gardens before dashing off to the final gig of the Cambridge Jazz Festival (it’s been a crazy couple of weeks!).

Pianist Rebecca Nash and singer Sara Colman have created a wonderful partnership in composition and performance, combining elements of jazz, folk and classical music. Together, they have created Ribbons, which is not available online until February - to listen to this music before then, you have to buy a physical CD or vinyl. And you should.

The combination of Colman’s voice seems to be perfect alongside Nash’s piano, and their songs are both complex and simple in equal measure. The emotions behind the lyrics are matched to the composing and performing energy.

Nash and Colman were joined on stage for the final lunchtime gig of the EFG London Jazz Festival 2025 by Henrik Jensen (double bass) and Jonathan Silk (drums). On the album, there are a number of guests: Percy Pursglove (trumpet), Ruth Hammond (bass clarinet), Iain Ballamy (sax) and Trish Clowes (sax). The music undoubtedly benefits from the additional parts, but for this intimate Sunday lunchtime gig, the quartet performed them in stripped-back brilliance.

Starting with the album’s title track, the gig seemed to establish strands between the quartet and into the audience, mirroring the Ribbons themselves. Jensen and Silk played a strong supporting role but the piano and voice came to the fore. Both Nash and Colman are well-respected individually and in other ensembles, but together they seem to have found their niche.

The album came from a Covid-enforced ten-day sabbatical in 2020 and each musician’s own influences combine in the collection and arrangements.

Ribbons was followed at the album launch by Turning Over Stones and the first single Noble Heart. Every tune has a story to tell alongside its musical credibility. Colman’s The Gardener has been reworked by the pair for this album and there is a sense of real collaboration throughout.

The songs I heard were a taster of what is available on the whole album and I highly recommend you buy Ribbons before it is available on streaming platforms: check out Stoney Lane Records.

Support for the ‘Ribbons’ launch was from singer-songwriter Bridget Walsh