For the first entry of 2026 in this blog, I’d like to set a warm and welcoming tone. Let’s forget 2025 and the unforgivable antics of the egotistical bullyboy leaders of the East and the West. Instead, let’s cross our fingers, and hope for better things to come.

The key to a happy new year, I think, is for us all to be nice to each other for a change. It’s a philosophy embodied in the motto of the central characters in the novel, The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas: “All for one, and one for all”. That sentiment is reflected in the title of this instrumental track by the jazz saxophonist, Iain Ballamy, and his recent collaborators:

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Ballamy has already appeared in these pages as a sideman in Bill Bruford’s All Heaven Let Loose and as one third of Quercus in June Tabor posts (Anthology, As I Roved Out). This time, he leads his own band. With Rob Luft on guitar, Conor Chaplin on bass and Corrie Dick on drums, he has created an album of relaxed lounge jazz.

Riversphere … is a fluid, textural exploration between improvisation and composition. [It] mirrors the endless cycles and movements of river ecosystems weaving together diverse musical influences into a seamless, organic whole.

Iain Ballamy’s website

One for all also features the trumpets of guest musicians Laura Jurd and Charlie Ballamy, creating an intricate braid of brassy sounds. It’s the audio equivalent of a bright Scottish tartan – very appropriate for the beginning of a new year, although a little late for Hogmanay.

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Finally, with fingers crossed in homage to the musketeers lightly crossed swords, I give you my traditional New Year message for audiophiles:

May your vinyl, CD and digital music collections grow fat, may your hi-fi systems continue to faithfully reproduce those recorded sounds and may your ears be sharp, free of wax and undamaged by live bands who turn the volume knobs way too high.

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