When Jordi Pujol approached me with the idea to create a 30th Anniversary record for Fresh Sound New Talent featuring musicians affiliated with the UK scene I was immediately excited by this prospect for several reasons.

Firstly, having recently released on FSNT, and being well aware of the superb quality of the back catalogue generally for the label in its 30 years in existence, it was quite an honour to be entrusted with the task of producing this commemorative album- and a task I knew I would really enjoy.

Secondly, I knew that with the strength of the current scene in the UK and with many friends and musicians working along complementary lines in the UK and neighbouring European scenes; I could almost straight away imagine how we could bring something like this into being. And it wasn’t long before I approached the musicians included here and set a brief for people to try and write a new composition, or arrangement, for this album using whichever line-up they wished from this pool of fantastic musicians: Alex Hitchcock, Jay Davis, Tom Ollendorff, Ronan Perrett, Conor Chaplin, John Turville, Sam Braysher, Steve Fishwick, Michael Chillingworth, Adele Sauros and myself, Alex Merritt.

As such, you will find here a balance of smaller and larger group performances; full octets and nonets with featured soloists alongside chord-less quartets and more traditional, but no less fresh, saxophone-led quartets/quintets. It was a joy to work with all the musicians involved here and I very much enjoyed inviting a range of contrasting, yet mutually supportive musical voices into the fold. ‘Common Threads’; here represented by a mycelium network reflects the connections between all of us- ever present yet often hidden, that once discovered, can become a great source of energy and inspiration for all.

—Alex Merritt, 2022