Forever Presence is the recorded debut of a new project by London-based guitarist, activist and producer Jelly Cleaver.
Jelly has had an incendiary rise over the last year; she has received the Steve Reid Award, is a Serious Take Five artist, was nominated for an Ivors Composer Award, and has been called “the next artist to make an impact on the London Jazz Scene” by Tina Edwards. Yet in the excitement and movement of this jazz scene, Forever Presence takes a different path, focusing on the neglected elements of ballads and beauty to allow other emotions to enter the music. It pays tribute to artists like Pharaoh Sanders, Alice Coltrane and Dhafer Youssef, as well as taking inspiration from Jelly’s contemporaries such as Moor Mother and Angel Bat Dawid. Weaving together spiritual jazz, blues, soul, and psychedelic rock and accompanied by rising stars of the UK jazz scene, Forever Presence explores in five tracks the narratives of loss, love and the universe.
