STRANGE and surprising what you can find in a charity shop. During a forage in an East London Oxfam I discovered a marvellous record, released just before the pandemic and underpublicised, underknown and underestimated. It was Trumpeter Byron Wallen’s praise song album to his South London home neighbourhood of Woolwich, simply called Portrait.

It's really a love album: to his neighbours, his streets and their families, the musicians who play with him, and to Woolwich’s working-class history with field recordings of its children, its market, its schools, its central square, ferry and workplaces, its internationalism and powerful diversity. This is a musician’s paean to the place where he lives and belongs.

Born in Stoke Newington, north-east London in 1969, Wallen’s parents are from Belize. “They were not musicians,” he says, “but they loved music; all my siblings learned the piano at an early age.

“I started on euphonium at 11 and went on to the trumpet at 13. I was a body-popper so was mad for Electro and Hip Hop. I also loved classical music, reggae, lovers’ rock and soul. Later, when I heard Weather Report I got into that and traced it back to Miles Davis — which is when I bought some jazz which I grew to love.”

His first big influence was Louis Armstrong. “I loved his larger-than-life energy and the way he radiated love through his singing and amazing playing. After that, Miles, Herbie Hancock, Stravinsky and Bach were my main inspirations.”

As a young musician he went to New York and studied with eminent trumpeters Jimmy Owens, Donald Byrd and Jon Faddis. He gained a degree from Sussex University in Psychology, Philosophy and Maths. His early English jazz associates were singer Cleveland Watkiss and saxophonists Courtney Pine and Jean Toussaint.

He played with Tomorrow’s Warriors and the Grand Union Orchestra, and formed his band Sound Advice in 1992. Another of his influences was the pioneer free drummer John Stevens, with whom he recorded some powerful albums, including New Cool of 1992. “I hadn’t really approached free improv before playing with him,” says Wallen, “and it was a liberating experience.”

He is also a virtuoso player of shells. “I look upon myself as a conch player,” he announced at a recent Vortex performance. “Conch is the first trumpet!”

“I first saw videos of Tibetan monks playing them. I found some in Adaptatrap in Brighton, and from then on started making my own. Later I heard about the US trombonist and conch player Steve Turre, who was given shells by the great saxophonist Roland Kirk. Later, I played them with Steve and the legendary pianist McCoy Tyner.”

Wallen is an avowed internationalist and musical traveller, and the inspiration for his music “comes from the deepest parts of the Central African rain forest, the remotest places in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia and the early music of Europe as well as the more obvious influences of jazz, funk, dance music and blues.”

It also strikes deep chords in his home nation, as his tune Closed Circle <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cgrh1_hSOro> on his album Indigo, invokes the spirit of Stephen Lawrence, murdered by racists on the streets of south-east London in 1993.

I ask him about Woolwich. “It’s where I’ve lived since 1998. Over the last 25 years I’ve seen it diversify and develop. I conceived Portrait while sitting in Woolwich’s Central Square, being struck by the community around me with its mixture of cultures and nationalities, from Nepalese elders to young Nigerian men, Somali mothers with their children, a new Eastern European contingent and descendants of families who used to work in the docks and the arsenal. In Portrait I am meditating on identity, culture and what it means to belong.”

The album has a vibrantly beautiful human depth and empathy, a sonic reflection of the Royal Arsenal Co-operative society watchwords pictured on the sleeve: “Each for all and All for each.”

I ask about his musical confreres and how they manifest such a co-operative spirit.

“A band is a team,” he replies. “When you form one you are assembling a combination of energy united in transforming dots on a page into molecular sound waves. This is a special process and you trust the people who are implementing these transformations. We’re a family and have developed this together.

“We have drummer, Rod Youngs, a real powerhouse of energy and fuel; bass guitarist Paul Michael is a really solid player with great melodic fire - and guitarist Rob Luft always gives 150 per cent and his playing has great contour and dimension.”

And what about the trumpeter?

“I am who I am,”he says. “I love people and believe in the power of love to transcend any boundaries.”

His hornsound has passion and deep breathy undercurrents that remind me of the great Roy Eldridge. Emotive Caribbean power burns in his notes as if heart and soul are baked into his horn. Hear him on tracks like Fundamental <https://twilightjaguar.bandcamp.com/track/fundamental> or Each for All and All for Each <https://twilightjaguar.bandcamp.com/track/each-for-all-and-all-for-each> with Richard Olatunde Baker’s congas and Luft’s zipping guitar, and his conch sound on Ferry Shell, dedicated to the iconic Woolwich Ferry.

And when the children’s voices of Plumcroft Primary School join him in a human amalgam on Spirit of the Ancestors <https://twilightjaguar.bandcamp.com/track/spirit-of-the-ancestors>, singing “Hear it! Feel it! Change it! Touch it!”, it is a deeply affective and anthemic chorus of the future in the present.

Portrait is released by Twilight Jaguar Records.