Voted top singer in Melody Maker’s 1971 Jazz Poll, Norma subsequently recorded this, her first album, to be released the following year on Decca’s Argo label. Although she began her career in 1965 singing jazz standards, her exploration of the use of voice took Norma to experimentalism and the evolvement of a wordless approach to improvisation that she was to make distinctively her own.
Featuring the cream of modern British jazz talent including Kenny Wheeler, Paul Rutherford, Frank Ricotti, Tony Levin, Alan Skidmore, Henry Lowther, Art Themen, Gary Boyle, Chris Pyne, Chris Laurence, John Surman and John Taylor, ‘Edge of Time’ is to this day a startlingly original work not least in its deployment of her extraordinary vocal styling.
Norma continues to work at the forefront of British jazz and has been nominated three times in the BBC Jazz Awards for Best Vocalist. She was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2007 and in 2009 received the Skoda Jazz Ahead Award for her contribution to European Jazz.

“One of the truly outstanding albums of all time … this is an absolute must.” John Wickes, Avant Magazine