Jonny Mansfield Quartet featuring Emmanuel Michael

Recorded in September 2025, Wide Step brings together studio recordings and live performances captured at the Vortex Jazz Club in London. This dual format reflects the quartet’s core artistic philosophy: that their music lives equally in carefully shaped compositions and in the spontaneity of real-time interaction. The record documents the band at a peak of collective confidence, where groove, melody and deep listening drive every performance.

Their debut was praised by UK Vibe for its “vibrant spontaneity and exemplary interplay”, and the new album develops that language further with the addition of Emmanuel Michael, whose work with artists including Chris Dave, Savanna Harris and Marcus Gilmore brings a distinctive transatlantic perspective to the project.

Combining vibrant original compositions with the spontaneity of live interaction, the Jonny Mansfield Quartet has established itself as one of the most exciting voices in contemporary UK jazz. This London Jazz Festival appearance offers a rare opportunity to hear the group at a pivotal moment in its development.

This event will last for approximately 90 minutes without an interval.

Reviews

‘It’s great to hear a quartet that are so obviously on the same wavelength and this is true of the whole session. This quartet exudes class, style and substance. Musical brilliance personified.’ ★★★★★ UK Vibe

‘Quartet! Live at Pizza Express is the latest work of Jonny Mansfield, a vibraphonist considered one of the greatest British jazz talents.’ Laboratorium (PL)

‘the chief joy of this terrific release, lies in its faultlessly cast and fluid, diversely swinging four-way energy and drive, allied to dynamic finesse and rhythmic flexibility of the highest order.’ Jazz Journal