Super excited to hear how friends and colleagues from the Myanmar Jazz Club interpret a new work, ‘Breaking the Walls’, I made with Itö as well as new pieces by emerging Yangon based composers. Thanks to the British Council for supporting this project.
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.
I’ve been working on an exciting project for a while, a collaboration with Yangon based musician Itö and the Myanmar Jazz Club which he runs. The UK culmination of this British Council funded project takes place at Turner Sims next Tuesday, where a new sextet of amazing musicians (with Liz Gre guesting on vocals) will perform new pieces by a number of the jazz club and a big new piece I’ve written in partnership with Itö. The Myanmar crew will play the music again at the British Embassy in Yangon in early November. Hope to see you there.
Had a brilliant time at the album launch party for my BRC album TOO MANY SWEETS on Tuesday at The Vortex in Dalston, London. Lovely crowd. Good to chat with Matthew Shlomowitz about the album and my music in more general terms. Amazing performance by Yshani Perinpanayagam of Drip Feeder. Great to play Love Letters with Hannah Williams too.
Been working on a new version of Love Letters for me to play (piano/electronics) with Hannah Williams. Had a good first rehearsal yesterday on it. I need to practise! We will play the premiere at a new University of Southampton festival focused around AI Arts on 2 June alongside music by Anna Appleby and Drew Crawford/Bella Barlow. Music by Jennifer Walshe will also feature.
The Love Letters [with AI] project has been featured as a research highlight too: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/research/highlights/music-ai-combine-for-quirky-performance
In 2022 I was involved in a couple of cool projects with Music colleagues at Southampton. The first was ‘Exquisite Corpse of AI (Consequences)’ which features music by Drew Crawford, Bella Barlow, Brona Martin and me. This video is the whole piece, but kicks in from near the end of Brona’s part leading into my ensemble contribution Phat Feet.
The Triple Helix Music Project was a collaboration with students and staff from across the Department, led by my friend and amazing colleague Drew Crawford, which responded to the Triplex Helix of the University of Southampton strategy…
My mate and colleague Dan Mar-Molinero’s bigband album ‘Taproot’ has just been released. I played keys on all 5 tracks on the album, which was recorded remotely during the pandemic lockdowns. Dan is a super talented saxophonist and composer. It was great to learn and play his excellent tunes and particularly loved ‘Our Place’, probably as I feature as soloist in the second half!
Some mega musicians feature on the album. Give it a listen!
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.
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