One of the gentlest and most intriguing albums to come out last year was Shabaka Hutchings’s poetically titled Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace featuring 11 tracks on which he plays an array of flutes, clarinet and, briefly, tenor saxophone alongside musicians and vocalists, including his Barbados-born father Anum Iyapo.

To those of us more used to the British jazzman’s outings with the Ancestors, Sons of Kemet, or, even earlier, the Comet Is Coming, this recording and the one before it, Afrikan Culture, represents a radical departure.

Shabaka Hutchings. Photo supplied

When I saw him at the 2017 Sydney Festival he was playing tenor saxophone – and occasionally clarinet – with his South African outfit the Ancestors. But just recently Shabaka announced that he was putting sax away and was exploring the wide world of the flute, even learning how to make wooden and bamboo ones.    

He has also started his own record label and one of his collaborators is Ganavya Doraiswamy, who opened this concert with a half hour set featuring her extraordinary melismas, a marrying of the Carnatic classical...