Happy New Year everyone, and thanks so much to all who made 2023 another epic year of music-making. I’m currently 3 weeks into a month-long trip to Australia visiting Bridget’s family and friends for the first time since our wedding last year, and am super happy to have finished off the recent writing commissions that came my way in recent months.
Firstly at the end of October I wrote an original soundtrack to the Charlie Chaplin's Behind the Screen from 1916, which was performed by the Brixton Chamber Orchestra at The Ritzy Cinema the following month. I uploaded a rough recording of the performance (synced to the original silent film) and it’s had almost half a million views already - check it out further down. After that came a 10-minute piece for the BBC Concert Orchestra that is being recorded later this month for BBC's The Music & Meditation podcast. And finally I was very happy to be asked by harpist Oliver Wass to once again write something for him, this time a duo with violinist Gabriela Opacka, and I finished off this 3-movement piece in the Australian Southern Highlands last week. Watch this space for both of the latter two…
The biggest thing I have coming up is my fourth album recording with my band (which has been gigging for 10 years as of this month), and this is happening next month in London’s Livingston Studios. We will be recording all the music I’ve written for the group in the last 3 years and I’m looking forward to sharing it with you all soon. We played at Pizza Express in Soho a few months ago and here are two videos from that gig:
I also have some exciting shows coming up. The “gigs” page on my websitehas a list of all of them, but an upcoming highlight is a concert with South African cellist Abel Selaocoe at Milton Court (London’s Barbican Centre) on Sat 20th Jan. If you haven’t checked out this guy then you must, it's kinda hard to describe or even know where to start, but try HERE. I’m also playing with the amazing Paul Clarvis (drums) and John Parricelli (guitar) at the Karamel Club in North London on Thurs 18th Jan, a concert at Saffron Hall on Fri 2nd Feb playing the music of Bill Evans with Rob Brockway (piano) and Dave Ingamells (drums), and have two gigs with my band coming up where we will be fresh from the studio - Tue 13th Feb in East London and Fri 22nd Mar in South Cambridgeshire.
Finally, I’ve also been working on two collaborative releases which will be out in the big world soon. One is a duo album with my good friend and colleague, trumpet player James Davison - we have recorded our arrangements of some jazz standards, original compositions, some Scott Joplin and a Beatles tune. The other is an EP of two tracks that sample my piece Still, Hidden Morning from my 2017 album Cross-Platform Interchange, which another great friend of mine Ben Mellefont has created, and then edited with a lot of input from me as well - the tracks were originally intended to be remixes but feel like completely new pieces of music by this stage. Once again, watch this space…
January is often a dark month, and I will no doubt be reminded of that when returning to the northern hemisphere next week. Later this month it will be 10 years since my dad passed away, and I would like to pay tribute to how much he did both for me and for the world of music. Also there are many parts of the world with much suffering at the moment and my heart goes out to all who are living in unimaginable hell right now, especially in Gaza and in the motherland of Ukraine. May 2024 bring more love and peace in the world.