Shifa

Ecliptic is a single-track set recorded in 2023 at London’s Café Oto. All three musicians are muscular performers, whether it is Musson’s gritty wailing, Thomas’ key pounding or Sanders’ non-stop percussion. The album includes several distinct passages, whether intensive blowouts, quieter sections of extended techniques, or brief moments of soloing or duets. Without taking anything away from the towering stature of both Thomas and Sanders, Musson’s tone and assertiveness do much to help make Ecliptic special. Her sound carries a tactile immediacy that feels both physical and deliberate. Her lines produce something akin to vocalizations that are both confrontational and confessional. Musson’s playing is particularly compelling when accompanied by Thomas’ own brand of physicality – hammering out rhythms at speed and and locking into volatile exchanges with her saxophone. Shifa takes its name from the Arabic word for peace, which was a prescient choice. Since the band’s emergence nearly a decade ago, the world’s need for peace has only deepened. Not just peace among nations or factions, but the quieter, harder kind that comes from within. Amid the constant stream of grim headlines, we are fortunate that music like this exists. For 46 minutes, it is a needed reminder that art is a pathway through which one can both seek refuge and experience joy. – Mike Borella, AVANT MUSIC NEWS https://avantmusicnews.com/2025/10/26/amn-reviews-shifa-%d8%b4%d9%81%d8%a7%d8%a1-ecliptic-2025-discus-music/

Shifa features Rachel Musson on tenor sax, Pat Thomas on piano and Mark Sanders on drums & percussion. This disc was recorded live at Cafe Oto in February of 2023. The name Shifa is taken from the Arabic word for healing. I’ve reviewed several discs from UK saxist Rachel Musson when she was working with Eddie Prevost, Alex Ward and Federico Ughi. British keyboard wiz, Pat Thomas, plays a variety of keyboards and recorded with dozens of UK musicians like Derek Bailey, Evan Parker and Eugene Chadbourne. Master drummer Mark Sanders also worked with Paul Dunmall, John Butcher and Jah Wobble. This is the second disc by this trio, the first one was also recorded at Cafe Oto and released in 2019. This disc consists of one long 46 minute set. The set is/was well-recorded and balanced superbly. The starts off explosively with rambunctious tenor sax, sprawling piano and drumming which erupts powerfully at times and then settles down into a calmer space. Mr. Sanders’ strong mallet-work is at the center of the trio/storm. Things get more compelling when the trio slows down, stretching things out and using suspense or space to keep things interesting. The trio sounds truly connected about halfway through the set, the piano and drums both creating a spacious, dreamy aura while Musson’s sax erupts on top. This free and forceful music is played with much intensity and often reaches a heavy plateau before settling down to some more calmer segments. If Creative Music is truly the Healing Force of the Universe, then this is some strong healing medicine. – Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery NYC

Shifa (Discus Music) joins the quirky and inquisitive UK tenor saxophonist Rachel Musson with eclectic pianist Pat Thomas and free-jazz drummer Mark Sanders on a straight-through improv set showcasing Musson’s free-blowing ensemble power and spacious lyricism. – John Fordham, THE GUARDIAN

Pat Thomas pops up again in another recent Discus release, this time playing alongside sax-player Rachel Musson and percussionist Mark Sanders. I felt drawn to it even before I put it on, as the title, Ecliptic, is one of my favourite words. For anyone who doesn’t know, it’s the term for the zone in the sky through which the planets move. I get a great view of it from behind our house, if one can talk of viewing an invisible disc. There’s no explanation in the online notes as to how they came to choose it (not that there needs to be), but I imagine it’s been drafted in to describe the zone within which the musicians move, like planets, sometimes seeming to wander but, in reality, always in orbit around a central point, governed by the forces they and it exert on each other. We are told, however, how the trio came by it’s name: suggested by Pat Thomas, it’s the Arabic word for healing, used here to describe the effect of the relationship of trust between the musicians and of the music on the audience. Of course, one should never judge an album by its blurb or its packaging. However, in this case it lived up to my expectations. A single, 46-minute track, it begins with percussion and what sounds like subdued but agitated sounds from inside the piano. Musson gradually introduces some more distinct pitches into the texture which lure Thomas back to the keyboard. The music reaches a point of stasis and the process begins again. Piano clusters mimic drums and vice versa. The sax begins what turns out to be a quieter conversation. And so it goes on: throughout, one is struck by the way these three musicians exploit all the possibilities available to them: soft passages, for example, might be haunting and sustained, dry and restless, or anything in-between. I’ve listened to it a few times now and have had the same thought each time: not only do they create great musical moments, but somehow they manage to create a feeling that something is about to happen. If this album were a book, you’d describe it as a ‘page-turner’. It’s a recording of a performance made at Café Oto back in 2023. I wish I’d been there. – Dominic Rivron, INTERNATIONAL TIMES https://internationaltimes.it/free-improvised-music-a-beginners-guide/ 

The trio…..offers a single 46 minute improvisation on this debut album. They obviously have a rapport as the resulting music is open and loose while also being thoughtful and organised, cohesive and free, and the product of three people listening to each other carefully. – Kevin Whitlock, JAZZWISE

Some books are divided into chapters—numbered, titled, and carefully structured. The musical equivalent is the tracklist: segmented, labeled pieces presented in order. But Ecliptic by the trio Shifa (شفاء, Arabic for “healing”) rejects that format entirely. This 46-minute set of improvised music by saxophonist Rachel Musson, pianist Pat Thomas and drummer Mark Sanders unfolds without titles, track divisions, or breaks. It is a single, uninterrupted performance recorded live at London’s Café OTO in February 2023. Like their previous releases, Live in Oslo (577 Records, 2020) and Live at Café OTO (577 Records, 2019), Ecliptic operates as a musical equilateral triangle—no dominant voice, no designated leader, just balanced collaboration. Each musician contributes equally, intuitively shifting between leading and supporting roles. This egalitarian interplay comes naturally to players of this caliber. Musson, an in-demand saxophonist, can be heard not only with her own groups but also alongside Alexander Hawkins, Olie Brice, and Alex Ward. Sanders is a foundational figure in UK free improvisation, his drumming integral to countless projects. Thomas, a master of piano, keyboards, and electronics, has—after years of tireless innovation—become something of a late-breaking icon, particularly through his work with groups like [ISM] and أحمد [Ahmed].

Because Ecliptic is presented as a single continuous piece, the music flows like a stream—sometimes tranquil, sometimes torrential, always in motion. At points, Musson’s raw, overblown tenor saxophone locks into Thomas’s thunderous, two-fisted piano assault, while Sanders pieces together his rhythmic architecture with percussive precision. The energy rises, the sound surges and the trio conjures the full physicality of what has long been dubbed “fire music.” Then, seemingly as one, the ensemble pulls back. The volume drops, the intensity shifts. A trill from the saxophone, a breath into the mouthpiece, fingers searching the inside of the piano, cymbals kissed and scraped—these quieter interludes invite close listening. Here, the intimacy is less about sheer force and more about subtle exchange. Not that the fire lacks intimacy, but rather that the hush demands a different kind of attention—a leaning-in, a recalibration of the ears.

Ecliptic resists easy categorization or summary; it unfolds as an act of collective creation, a sonic event that demands to be experienced in full. Shifa reminds us that improvisation, at its best, is not just spontaneous but deeply attuned—healing, even—and that some of the most profound musical statements are made without a single pause. – Mark Corroto, ALL ABOUT JAZZ   https://www.allaboutjazz.com/ecliptic-shifa-rachel-musson-pat-thomas-mark-sanders-discus-music

A WELSH heritage saxophonist, an Antiguan heritage British pianist and an English-Belizian heritage drummer, improvising as a trio with an Arabic name — Shifa, meaning “healing,” and recorded in February 2023 at Cafe Oto, Dalston, east London, play a 46-minute sound creation called Ecliptic — the path of the sun. The powerful music of Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas and Mark Sanders spans the world of sound with an astonishing and emotive virtuosity. I listened to their album immediately after watching a horrific newscast from the Gaza genocide and reading the words of Dr Nidal Jboor from the blitzed al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City: “Bombed into ash, doctors and nurses killed in their white coats, and patients — children, elders. The wounded — left to die on the floors of ruins that once promised healing. More than 25,000 children exterminated, hospitals and schools flattened, doctors executed, patients burned alive, aid turned into bait, starvation used as weapons, cities erased.” We hear the cry and the ordeal of the Palestinian people all through Shifa’s music, sometimes calm and serene, sometimes caustic and rasping, sometimes mollifying, sometimes irascible, always brilliantly played with instant, ever-inventive improvising, a musicianship which moves into every vein of the listener’s blood. The listener listens, imagines, interpretes and understands in what dramatist Edward Bond called “the art of the audience.” Sanders’ riveting introduction is soon fused with Musson’s belching notes and Thomas’s first chinking, bell-like phrases. Then a hushed pause, some scuttling Sanders and Musson’s sustained tenor saxophone at its most piercing and pained alongside Thomas’s unbridled runs and Sanders’ omnipresent drums. We are away and the world of healing is upon us. Somewhere among the multi-rhythms — the beauty of the quasi-melodic infusions, the spontaneous soundscape of real life from agony to hope, light and healing — Palestinian wilfulness, like this music, never gives up. “We are always scared that any reconstruction in Gaza is a target,” says Dr Karameh Hawash Kuemmerle, a pediatric neurologist, yet he talks too of active plans to rebuild al-Shifa so its healing can take new life, including a new 80-bed west wing, even in the very crux of Israeli bombardment and deadly drones. The Shifa trio comprise a pianist, drummer and hornplayer. In the poem by the late Palestinian laureate, Mahmoud Darwish, the protagonist is a “wandering guitar player” and Darwish writes of him: “I almost see him,/ Almost smell the blood on his strings./ I almost hear him/ Shouting like a storm:/ Listen:/ That’s the music of human flesh.” All the oxymorons of sound rise and fall in Ecliptic’s sunlit passages, in the storytelling eyes of the beautiful children of Gaza — skeletal, foodless and maimed. Yet still Shifa’s music, theirs and ours, cries out to every different ear in hope and love for them and the healing of their future in their Palestine, their own life-land, their own hereafter signalled by Shifa’s healing sounds. – Chris Searle, MORNING STAR https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/music-human-flesh

As drums rumbles and inner piano string reverb glance off every surface from the instrument’s hammers, plate and soundboard, Musson steps forward on Ecliptic with a barrage of bites, split tones and honks, often repeating phrases for maximum aggression. Still no matter how many freak notes, tongue slaps and widening slurs the saxophonist introduces, Thomas is there with answering or assertive patterns that bounce, pound and shake sympathetically. Meanwhile unperturbed Sanders bridges the sax-piano gaps with cymbal clips and bass drum pressure. The exposition become even more discordant following a slight pause at the one quarter mark with Sanders scraping and slapping his drum sides and tops as Musson dissects extended squeals and thickened honks and spears passing reed tones. Thomas is soon hitting the keys with as much concentrated power as Musson exhibits with her sandpaper-like abrasive growls and gargles. Meanwhile Sanders’ press rolls are also enhanced with vigorous stick rubs across Mylar tops. As the final sequence descends in pace and pressure, Thomas manages to interject a layer of steadiness with measured rhythmic pressure and keyboard clank although Sanders gong and cymbal pealing become more prominent. Still the saxophonist asserts her audacious creativity with a dog-whistle pitched bark that cuts through the combined concluding piano/ drum affiliation. – Ken Waxman, JAZZWORD https://www.jazzword.com/reviews/shifa/

Keyboard player Pat Thomas continues to astound with his deeply insightful writing about the impact of African Muslim and Arabic music on the history of jazz and a plethora of projects that transfigure tradition. There are his solos like investigations of Ellington and Monk, freely improvised prepared piano extrapolations, lushly orchestrated electronics, or abstracted Jungle/dub step. There’s his working ensembles like [Ahmed] along with Joel Grip, Antonin Gerbal, and Seymour Wright which interpolates the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik into a single-minded approach to collective deconstruction, Bleyschool with Dominic Lash and Tony Orrell that plumbs the music of Paul Bley, Ellington, Monk, and the trio Shifa شفاء with Rachel Musson and Mark Sanders that mines the tradition of free reed/piano/drums free jazz. And then there are his countless, ongoing collaborations he’s been part of over the last three-plus decades. For an in-depth examination of Thomas’s work, read Bill Shoemaker’s “Page One” column in PoD 69. These two recent releases on the Discus label deliver a new live recording by Shifa شفاء and Lifeline, a reinvention of Bleyschool as an electronic ensemble.

Ecliptic is the third release by Shifa شفاء, a name taken from the Arabic word for healing. Recorded live at Café Oto in London in February 2023, the 46-minute improvisation is a masterful study in spontaneous communication. Ecliptic is defined as “the great circle of the celestial sphere that is the apparent path of the sun among the stars or of the earth as seen from the sun” and that cyclical path is an apt analogy for this set. Starting out with the rustle of inside-piano playing and spattered percussion, Musson enters in with a stabbing motif. Sanders builds tumbling momentum and Thomas introduces hammered, splayed notes from the top of the keyboard and the piece slowly builds from there. The three lock in on sections of trouncing vigor countered by pools of calm with short solo statements by each of the players.

That strategy of elasticity of density and trajectory informs the ensuing improvisation. The trio takes their time building to crescendos of forceful tenor, shattering piano shards, and roiling percussion which they freely release into introspective interaction. Musson’s tenor playing is inspired throughout, drawing on the entire range of her horn, from squalling forceful torrents to probing, labyrinthine, dusky lyricism. Thomas’ acoustic piano playing is dazzling, from thunderous slabs, detailed cascades, pinpoint attack of notes and clusters to timbrally rich inside-piano preparations and plucked strings. Sanders’ sweeping percussive palette moves from shimmering layers of cymbals and abraded surfaces to pinpoint resonating punctuation to fiery, thunderous undercurrents of open pulse. The trio seamlessly navigates their way through all-in collective playing to various duos and solos, from explosive energy to pensive reflection, never once losing their singular focus. This one is another impressive addition to their discography.

Looking at the lineup of Pat Thomas, Dominic Lash, and Tony Orrell one might assume that Lifeline is an expansion of their piano/bass/drums trio Bleyschool. But take a closer look at the instrumentation with Thomas on keyboard and electronics, Lash on electric guitar, and Orrell on electric drums and cymbals and it is quickly apparent that something entirely different is going on here. From the first angular, shredded blasts, Lifeline carves out a strategy that caterwauls along with fervent intensity. While the sonic spectrum they draw from is brash and noisy, their interaction is sharp and detailed throughout. The six improvisations range from three to eleven minutes long, each carving out specific strategies toward group improvisation, building potent layers that are refracted with vigorous conviction and stalwart ingenuity.

Thomas has deep experience using electronics (check out releases like KANZA AL QALB or This Is Trickstep) and the textures, densities, and fractured-beats he fires off meld strapping heft with a keen sense of collaborative synergy. Lash has proven himself as a distinctive guitarist in groups like Trim or his duos with Thomas or Ståle Liavik Solberg. Here, his ringing tones, frayed clusters, or surging, fractured, overdriven lines provide an effective foil for Thomas’ electronics. Orrell’s use of electric drums provides the ideal complement to the group’s palette, providing spiky punctuation and jagged counterpoint to the improvisational arcs. Rarely does one encounter a trio that can balance two projects as diametrically diverse as Bleyschool and Lifeline. One looks forward to hearing where they will continue to push their partnership. – Michael Rosenstein, POINT OF DEPARTURE https://pointofdeparture.org/PoD92/PoD92MoreMoments4.html

Creative, inventive music in an intuitive, intelligent, immanent improvisation. Rachel Musson’s dominant tenor saxophone, at times silky and courteous, at others wallowing in supreme exuberance, writhing to the rhythm of Mark Sanders’s mallet playing. The tenor saxophone’s untimely gurgles and gurgles are scattered throughout the three-part score with piano and drums. Pat Thomas’s hyperactive and feverish piano, in free jazz mode, builds mounds of arabesques at its own pace, culminating in a high line of apotheosis. The drums unleash their incredible percussion, extending it to an expansive degree of intensity, joining the saxophone, laden with grating, cluttered, and heavy trappings, at the very peaks. The ensemble, whether playing in unison or in a slightly different rhythm, the three instrumentalists complement and respond to each other spontaneously, alternating moments of grandiose cacophony with delicate, secret, discreet moments, combining them with the quintessence of their playing, nervous and tumultuous to the extreme.

An impenetrable wall of visionary sounds, as agitated as it is still, is built; one might mistakenly think that the music has reached its maximum level of all it can offer in experimental, free -jazz, improvisation, and RIO, but it continues and is inscribed within its line of empirical amplitude and transformation, climbing crescendo with sounds reminiscent of Fred Frith of Henry Cow, torturing his guitar. A music that reminds us that the world is sick, that it needs to be healed; This world in perpetual war, categorized by deeply battered sounds breathed by the corrosive saxophone, by the refractory, unpredictable piano that sways on the notes, by the moving drums swaying between friction and slaps in compulsive effervescence of gong and cymbals, as well as by brief, concise, repetitive drum and percussion strikes. A collection of suffering sounds ostentatiously represents it, cluttered in its agony, with aspects characterizing a genocide. Long, slow movements are lost in the mazes of sounds that chase each other and seem to vanish only to return with renewed force. Shifa’s virtuoso touch allows discursive traits to emerge in his atypical musical space, reminiscent of Keith Tippett of Centipede, as well as pianist Cecil Taylor.

This magnificent album serves as a useful reminder of the value of these three contemporary artists. Their recital is remarkably composed, offering a wide range of expression. They deploy their genius, delivering a unique blend of precise, clear, and distorted, bumpy, and hammered sounds. A constant flow of exquisite and prolonged sounds, punctuated by vibrant, energetic modulations, gives each note its true dimension through Shifa. SHIFA, an iron fist capable of identifying these incendiary abstractions developing new forms of interaction and musical dialogue for her audacious creation ECLIPTIC (****¼) – Marie MESMER, HIGHLANDS

Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, and Mark Sanders are among the cream of the British improv scene and together form Shifa. Free improv is a genre that truly shines live. It’s therefore no surprise that Shifa – the Arabic word for “healing” – previously released the live albums Live at Cafe Oto (2019) and Live in Oslo (2020). Ecliptic was also recorded live, again at London’s renowned Cafe Oto, a haven for free-spirited musical souls like Peter Brötzmann, Lol Coxhill, and Matthew Shipp. The album consists of a single track that guarantees almost 46 minutes of music that will undoubtedly have the Swifties of this world screaming after just twenty seconds. There’s no overt leadership on Ecliptic: the three take turns leading and accompanying, playing music according to a call-and-response principle. This creates a meaningful musical conversation that never lapses or loses coherence. There’s also room for monologues and conversations in pairs, which provides the necessary variety. A great merit of Ecliptic is that the music always sounds clear, even when the piano thunders, Musson’s raw sax screams hoarsely, and the drums challenge the very concept of “reason.” Fortunately, there’s also room for intimate passages, allowing the listener to catch their breath and reflect on the trio’s unprecedented inventiveness. Ecliptic captivates from start to finish, weaving its exciting passages together like nothing else. This concert is fire music of the highest order. I wish I could have been there! – Patrick Auwelaert, JAZZ & MO’ https://www.jazzandmo.be/ecliptic

Shifa derives from an Arabic word meaning healing. The world needs a powerful remedy, and the storms unleashed on this album are all the more welcome. No need for an army of musicians to achieve this goal; the force that permeates this music comes from just three artists.

The forty-six-minute piece “Ecliptic” was recorded in February 2023 at London’s Café Oto, a key venue for experimental music. Rachel Musson is a regular at this concert hall, where she presented her work I Went This Way, a successful blend of spoken word and improvisation. Reminiscent of the raw sound of Gato Barbieri, the tenor saxophonist holds nothing back, captivating the interactions of her two colleagues and leaving them no choice but to join in her effervescent contributions. As a teenager, Rachel Musson discovered the joys of improvisation after meeting drummer Steve Argüelles during a workshop in Glamorgan, Wales, her hometown. Since then, she has become a sought-after instrumentalist known for her musical daring and who readily embarks on diverse experiments, including learning the Indian transverse flute, the bansuri.

Ten years separate the Paul Hamlyn Foundation for Artists Award given to Pat Thomas in 2014 and that of Mark Sanders in 2024. Both men simultaneously unleash rhythmic abstractions akin to fireworks. Nourished by the exploratory paths initiated by Tony Oxley with his Celebration Orchestra, the pianist enhances this live performance with his heterogeneous phrasing. For decades, the drummer has been propelling the elite of Anglo-Saxon free-jazz musicians forward, and he achieves remarkable feats throughout this recording.

A brief respite arrives thanks to Mark Sanders’ refined playing, which propels the music into a new dimension after twenty-eight minutes. A sense of completeness gently settles in with the notes scattered across Pat Thomas’ keyboard. The melodic emphasis takes center stage, highlighting the raw beauty of Rachel Musson’s sound. Authentic and charismatic, the Shifa trio allows this performance to act as a catalyst for positive energy. – Mario Borroni, CITIZEN JAZZ https://www.citizenjazz.com/Shifa-%D8%B4%D9%81%D8%A7%D8%A1.html