Category Archives: Gigs

Myanmar Jazz Club Photos

Had an amazing time playing with Declare Sextet at Turner Sims a few weeks. My Uncle, Markus Kinch, captured some brilliant pictures. Was awesome to work with these amazing musicians: Nick Willsher, Tamar Osborn, Francesca Ter-Berg, George Balmont and Jake Long, with a very special guest slot from Liz Gre. Looking forward to editing together the recordings to share with the world and to hearing how the Yangon crew play the same music at their gig in November! Thanks again to British Council for funding.

Declare Sextet!
Tamar Osborn
Nick Willsher
Jake Long
Gre

Laefer Quartet performances of ‘Avalanche’

Laefer Quartet will give the world premiere of my sax quartet (with electronics) – Avalanche – at Turner Sims on 4 March 2024 at 1pm, as part of the Department of Music Lunchtime series. They will also play the piece at the launch of their new album STRATA on 16 March 2024 at St Peter’s Church, Fulham.

I’m really delighted to have Avalanche included on STRATA, which is released 1 March.

Love Letters [with AI]

Was a total joy working with the amazing Hannah Williams, awesome musicians from Riot Ensemble and a brilliant research team from the University of Southampton on the ‘Love Letters [with AI]’ project. Ash Sealy (@whatabouttheash) captured the London gig fantastically. I’m really proud of this project and especially my new 7-song cycle Love Letters. We recorded it between the two performances too and the cycle will feature on my portrait album. Too Many Sweets, next year…

Hannah Williams (vocals), George Barton (percussion), Adam Swayne & Siwan Rhys (piano), Aaron Holloway-Nahum (sound), Stephanie Lamprea (soprano), Prof. Will May
Sam Wilson

‘Enemy of the Stars’

I’ve created an electronic soundtrack to accompany Josh Ben-Tovim‘s choreography for ‘Enemy of the Stars’. The musical materials were created with Hollie Harding back in 2019 as part of the Cohan Collective Residency. The work will be performed by Impermanence as part of a quadruple bill in a tour taking in Huddersfield, Bristol and London in April and May. Details in gig listings.

ANIL SOOD premiere

On 22 July 2022 London Sinfonietta are staging an event in Southampton, UNTOLD STORIES, to screen the premiere of ANIL SOOD. I collaborated with the amazing artist Alys Scott-Hawkins on this project, writing a piece for piano and electronics, A-Listers, that Clíodna Shanahan recorded back in July 2021. Alys used the recording of this piece to make a super cool film. The music and film explore the life of Anil Sood, who we both met when he ran our local DIY store. Anil is an amazing person, who ran (and runs) drum’n’bass events as PARADOX. Following this premiere the film will be available on Youtube.

Clíodna Shanahan will also perform the UK premiere of my Too Many Sweets (when Dorothy met Blake) for toy pianos and electronics. The rest of the programme features a great piece by Julia Wolfe, East Broadway, and Steve Reich’s seminal Electric Counterpoint.

Playing the piano…

Back in March I played piano with the Dan Mar-Molinero orchestra on a strange gig bringing together AI and jazz. I’ve had a bit of a strange relationship with the piano over the years. I love playing jazz music in particular but also spent a lot of my 20s around serious players and lost confidence about my playing. Piano has remained central to my compositional practice though. More recently my mate Dan Mar-Molinero keeps asking me to do gigs like this one at Turner Sims. Playing with Jasper Hoiby and Julian Arguelles as well as many other great musicians in this project was fantastic. I like it. I want to do more. Here are some great photos from Ash from whatabouttheash.

Dorothy Chan premieres ‘Too Many Sweets…’

Dorothy Chan will premiere Too Many Sweets (when Dorothy met Blake) for toy pianos and PICO synthesiser at The Cell, New York, on 15 December. Dorothy approached me to write this piece at the end of 2020 and it features 3 of her toy pianos (Lil’ Blue, Perry, Beu) and a new wavetable synth designed by Blake Troise (aka Protodome).