Kenny Wheeler, Stan Sulzmann, John Parricelli, Chris Laurence, Martin France

Songs for Quintet is the last album by Kenny Wheeler, the Toronto-born trumpeter and flugelhornist who lived in England from 1952. Chick Corea had recommended him to Manfred Eicher in 1970, and his ECM catalogue runs from Gnu High in 1975 to Music for Large & Small Ensembles and beyond. The session for this album, in December 2013, was the last time he played with other musicians. He died on 18 September 2014, and ECM issued the record for what would have been his 85th birthday.

It was recorded over two days at Abbey Road Studios in London, produced by Eicher and Steve Lake, with Andrew Dudman engineering. Wheeler plays flugelhorn only, with four long-standing associates: Stan Sulzmann on tenor saxophone, John Parricelli on guitar, Chris Laurence on double bass and Martin France on drums. Sulzmann and Laurence had worked with him since the late 1960s.

All nine pieces are Wheeler's, most of them of recent vintage. A few have a history. Old Time began as How It Was Then, a song with words by Norma Winstone recorded by Azimuth. The Long Waiting had appeared in a big band version, and Nonetheless was first heard on Angel Song. Canter No. 1 opens with Laurence alone on bass and turns buoyant once the horns come in. The ballad The Long Waiting starts on spare guitar, bass and brushes before Wheeler's melancholy statement. Sly Eyes is a kind of tango, and he vaults into its theme over France's parade-ground snare drum.

Wheeler's tone is more fragile than before, but the lines stay clear, and the tunes give the other four plenty of room. The record is less a feature for the leader than a group reading of his music, with Sulzmann sometimes taking the initiative. In his blog The Blue Moment, Richard Williams singled out Sulzmann for "what may be a career-best performance". Matt Collar of AllMusic called the album "a beautiful and poignantly subtle farewell from one of the quiet giants of jazz." Garry Booth in BBC Music Magazine predicted that this "superb swansong" was "destined to be an ECM classic."

This is the CD edition, ECM 2388, released in January 2015, in a digipak with about 52 minutes of music.