The tuba’s not the most common instrument to assemble a trio around, nor the easiest, and this one wisely favours functionality over fireworks. A frequent face amid London’s high-yield jazz scene, having worked with Makaya McCraven and Sons of Kemet among others, tubist Cross and his comrades incorporate a rousing New Orleans bump into the cosmopolitan vocabulary of their milieu on Fyah, their first full album. Cross’s playing is implacable and massive, yet steps with a conscientious lightness, a gentle-giant comportment that generously builds space and structure in, on and around which drummer Moses Boyd and saxophonist Nubya Garcia can flesh out the details.
