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Cellar Music Group releases British Columbia-born bassist, composer and bandleader Neil Swainson’s stirring quintet album Fire in the West. The visionary bassist’s first release since 1987 features pieces that represent the composer’s bold interactions with pivotal places in space and time, and with the jazz innovators whose paths crossed with his own along the way. Fire in the West is a rare peek into the inner world of a musician who has spent much of his life as a dependently brilliant sideperson for such notable musicians as Woody Shaw, George Shearing and Roberta Gambarini. Swainson is in great company on this incendiary quintet release with pianist Renee Rosnes and drummer Lewis Nash by his side in the rhythm section; and with trumpeter Brad Turner and tenor saxophonist Kelly Jefferson making up the ensemble’s front-line. With compositional dedications to musical influences (the aforementioned “Silver Mine”), to impactful places (“Kyushu,” a musical reflection of Swainson’s time spent on this Japanese island), to people (“Fell Among Thieves” references a biblical parable that Swainson relates to some “wonderful” people he has known who fell into difficult company and circumstance), this new recording offers a personal glimpse inside Swainson’s musical and compositional mind.