By Michael Ullman

This new album from Norma Winstone and Kit Downes is a marvel.

Norma Winstone, Kit Downes — Outpost of Dreams (ECM)

The adventurous British singer Norma Winstone once described her musical life in this way: “I’ve always been on the edge, always felt like I was swimming against the tide and somehow couldn’t stop.“ Always has been over the course of a half century. Winstone was born in 1941. Even her honors seem a little distant. In 1971, she was voted the top singer in the Melody Maker Jazz Poll. 14 years ago she received a Lifetime Achievement Jazz Medal from a cheery-sounding group called the Worshipful Company of Musicians. Part of Winstone’s longevity might be attributed to her style; she has always seemed to be unflustered musically. Winstone often takes the opportunity to improvise freely. To my ears, even when her voice strays into odd places, she never sounds less than purposeful and self-contained. She never shouts. Winstone has a pure, flexible voice to which she appends little vibrato. She sounds intimate, but never fragile or sentimental.

On a ballad like “Every Time We Say Goodbye,” Winstone takes her time: the tempo is slow. She pauses between phrases, yet never loses the rhythmic interest. She brings out the pathos of this standard and many others. On Winstone’s celebrated album Somewhere Called Home, she enters her version of “Hi Lili Hi Lo” at a whisper, reminding us that it is, as the lyric says, a “sad song.” In the second chorus she offers a crescendo and then subsides again. Tomorrow, the song tells us, will be another day — hence the excitement of the crescendo — but we are in the present. Winstone is just as effective in putting across originals; for example she infuses the story of “Sea Lady“ with what could be described as submerged excitement. Astonishingly, her voice has not roughened even as she has entered her 80s.

Winstone’s career began in England in the late ’60s. She looks back at her early successes as almost haphazard. Perhaps they were. She “went along” to a gig at a club called the Charlie Chester. She sat in with drummer John Stevens, who was sufficiently enthusiastic to mention her to club owner Ronnie Scott. Eventually, she was given a month-long gig opposite Rahsaan Roland Kirk. She was on her way. Her first recordings were made with a distinguished free jazz group called the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, whose shifting cast includes many of Britain’s most distinguished improvisers: Kenny Wheeler, Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Dave Holland, and John Stevens. In 1972 she made her first album as a leader: Edge of Time, whose cast included pianist/arranger John Taylor, whom she would marry. They recorded frequently in duets, small ensembles, and with the late ’70s group Azimuth. She’s kept up her British connections. More recently, she recorded Mirrors with a big band led by Wheeler, who passed away in 2014.

Singer Norma Winstone. Photo: Paolo Soriani

Winstone can sing with any size group, but to me she was made for piano duets: she has recorded duets with John Taylor, Fred Hersch (Songs and Lullabies), and now with fellow Britisher Kit Downes. Her new disc is as distinguished as I would expect. Winstone wrote the lyrics to nine of the 10 pieces on Outpost of Dreams. The lyrics are meditations on what sounds like a somber vision of eternity: “From the room where he lies/ all he sees is the sky’s changing light.” The word “distant” recurs in songs in which the singer contemplates the vast natural world as she yearns for her lover. Sad or happy, the figures of the lovers who appear in many of these songs are distant, even at times disconnected: “Do you remember when we sat/ Looking into the darkness?” The couple were not searching for a deeper emotional attachment: the name of the song is “In Search of Sleep.” The speaker — and here Winstone is speaking rather than singing — desires sleep even as she seems to want this lover to remember their big moment together. This piece opens with a whimsical piano solo by Kit Downes, who wrote the music to “Sleep” and four others. Winstone sounds almost as intimate on the opening song, “El,” which comes off as bleak: “Rain clouds may gather /Darken the sky now” making it hard to “see a future.” However difficult what’s to come may be, Winstone finds solace in the present: “All at once the warm rain/ Falling, slowly/ Bringing what we need.” Still, even in the more musically upbeat “Fly the Wind,” we are told that “you sail alone.” Everywhere, Downes is not just supportive; he is an active and sensitive collaborator. His meditative solo on Carla Bley’s “Jesus Maria” leads to Winstone’s entrance. These two seem made for each other.

The outlier in Outpost of Dreams is what may become the listener’s favorite song on the collection: the traditional “Black is the Colour of My True Love’s Hair.” It’s as arid a story as “Danny Boy.” The speaker loves a fellow’s hair and eyes — even the ground on which he stands. She prays that they will become one, but that seems unlikely. She writes him a letter “and suffers death a thousand times.” Meanwhile she sits on a river bank and weeps. This haunting song is given a haunting performance.

On this disc, Winstone and Downes have assembled a unique repertoire of interconnected songs. The singer remains a marvelous storyteller; Winstone’s clear and seductive voice paces time seductively. She improvises wordlessly — less here than on other discs. No matter. She leaves us time to absorb each tale, to experience her perhaps depressing view of eternity alongside her careful celebration of the natural world as it is in the present. Now, if only those lovers would sit still.

For over 30 years, Michael Ullman has written a bimonthly jazz column for Fanfare Magazine, for which he also reviews classical music. He has emeritus status at Tufts University, where for 45 years he taught in the English and Music Departments, specializing in modernist writers and nonfiction writing in English, and jazz and blues history in music. He studied classical clarinet. The author or co-author of two books on jazz, he has written on jazz and classical music for the Atlantic Monthly, New Republic, High Fidelity, Stereophile, Boston Phoenix, Boston Globe, and other venues. He plays piano badly.