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Django Bates
Django Bates is a pianist, Eb horn player, and composer, who credits the variety of musical influences in his work to his father who was a collector of Jazz, South African and Romanian folk music. He is currently a professor of jazz at Bern University of the Arts.
A founder member of Loose Tubes, Django was a leading light in the 1980s European jazz renaissance. He has appeared alongside Michael Brecker, Bill Bruford, Jack Dejohnette, Sidsel Endresen, Wynton Marsalis, Marius Neset, Evan Parker, Dudu Pukwana, Ronnie Scott, Cleveland Watkiss. In 1997 Django was awarded the prestigious Danish Jazzpar prize, dubbed the ‘Nobel Prize of Jazz’.
In 2010 Django released Belovèd Bird; a celebration of his childhood hero Charlie Parker, for which he used the classic acoustic piano trio constellation. When Django was commissioned to write The Study Of Touch for a BBC Proms concert, the work inspired Manfred Eicher to produce a new Belovèd album, this time focusing on Django’s own compositions. This rekindling of Django’s relationship with the ECM label led to the recording of Blue Maqams where he first encountered Anouar Brahem.
During the pandemic, Django chose to simplify his work; a process of distillation which resulted in a completely new suite of solo piano music - Distilled - which he is currently performing. (“About as perfect as anything could be.” Richard Williams, The Blue Moment, 5th January 2024).
In 2019 The IVORS Academy honoured Django with The IVORS Jazz Award. Describing him as “A musical polymath and prodigiously gifted composer, at the heart of Britain’s jazz scene for the last 40 years”, the Academy acknowledged his “Unique and exceptional talent and his relentless drive to collaborate and seek out new possibilities to explore where jazz can go.”
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Anouar Brahem: After the Last Sky
by Scott Gudell
Although ECM Records has released straight-ahead jazz, free form and more, many of their recordings sweep over listeners with mysterious, ethereal and hypnotic sounds creating alluring siren calls. When those sessions are taking place with an ECM release on the horizon, it is easy to imagine the artists are thinking about 'where's the mystery?'--which is what Anouar Brahem seemed to focus on this time around. Brahem, a revered Tunisian-born master of the oud (the fretless stringed instrument with ...
Continue ReadingAnouar Brahem: After the Last Sky
by Mario Calvitti
Fin dal suo esordio la musica del suonatore di oud tunisino Anouar Brahem ha oscillato tra i tre poli della musica tradizionale classica araba, l'improvvisazione jazzistica e la musica classica europea di stampo cameristico, generalmente adattando le quantità di ogni singolo componente ai musicisti scelti per interpretarla. Dopo i primi due album nei quali aveva proposto essenzialmente la propria versione della musica classica araba, accompagnato da musicisti e strumenti di quella tradizione, Brahem si è via via spostato ...
Continue ReadingBill Bruford: The Summerfold Collection 1987-2008
by John Kelman
Intrepid percussionist/composer/bandleader Bill Bruford began his career in the late '60s art-rock arena with Yes and, later, King Crimson, but jazz has always moved underneath, like an eddying current. His early recordings, well documented on the companion Winterfold Collection, may not speak the language of jazz, but they possess its spirit. By 1986, Bruford was looking for a new path. Crimson had again dissolved, the 1981-'84 incarnation having provided him with the opportunity to explore nascent electronic drum ...
Continue ReadingDjango Bates: Tenacity
by Pat Youngspiel
Few jazz artists go to such great lengths to make their audience feel at the same time bewildered by humor-infused technical exhaustion and smitten by charm and sheer musical beauty as Django Bates does. The English pianist and composer has gained a reputation over the years, for bringing the quirkiest and widest range of ideas and styles to a, more or less, aesthetically-serious art form. Some might even claim he's the Frank Zappa of jazz. Then again, who's to say ...
Continue ReadingA Night at the Jazz Circus! - Part 1
by Ludovico Granvassu
Circus is like Jazz. They both require a great deal of originality and a capacity to improvise and be in the moment. They come out of a sense of urgency and self-expression since artists do not embrace them to get rich. And they both demand incredible dedication and discipline. This week we explore the connections between these two performative art forms, focusing on jazz inspired by the circus world, composed for circus shows, or evoking—in a way or ...
Continue ReadingDjango Bates: Tenacity
by John Kelman
It's been a long time since that late May, 2013 week in Luleå, Sweden, where pianist Django Bates and his Belovèd Trio first collaborated with the renowned Norrbotten Big Band. Fully documented in the All About Jazz article Django Bates: From Zero to Sixty in Five Days, Bates, bassist Petter Eldh and drummer Peter Bruun, along with other non-Norrbotteners, including guitarist Markus Pesonen, tubaist Daniel Herskedal and trombonist/vocalist Ashley Slater, made the lengthy trek to this small coastal town, located ...
Continue ReadingDjango Bates: 60+40—Charlie Parker: 100
by Vic Albani
Nel nefasto 2020 molte celebrazioni, anniversari e festival a tema hanno dovuto arrendersi all'emergenza Covid-19 anche se, in calendario, ne sono rimasti alcuni davvero irrinunciabili. Uno di questi è il centenario della nascita del signor Charlie Parker, nato a Kansas City il 29 agosto 1920 e scomparso poi a New York nella primavera del 1955. Ad uno dei nomi “must" del jazz di tutti i tempi sono dedicati nel corso dell'anno decine e decine di omaggi, ricordi, commemorazioni, festival interi ...
Continue ReadingJazz Musician of the Day: Django Bates
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Django Bates' birthday today!
Django was born in a house near New Beckenham Station. A ropy, semitone flat D'Almaine Piano was the most fascinating toy in the house. He found the clatter of railway workers working throughout the night comforting, but had reoccurring nightmares about a Hippopotamus head slowly moving from one side of the ceiling to the other, and of having fluttering moths stuck between his toes. When he was three and a half, ...
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Jazz Musician of the Day: Django Bates
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Django Bates' birthday today!
Django was born in a house near New Beckenham Station. A ropy, semitone flat D'Almaine Piano was the most fascinating toy in the house. He found the clatter of railway workers working throughout the night comforting, but had reoccurring nightmares about a Hippopotamus head slowly moving from one side of the ceiling to the other, and of having fluttering moths stuck between his toes. When he was three and a half, ...
read more
Jazz Musician of the Day: Django Bates
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Django Bates' birthday today!
Django was born in a house near New Beckenham Station. A ropy, semitone flat D'Almaine Piano was the most fascinating toy in the house. He found the clatter of railway workers working throughout the night comforting, but had reoccurring nightmares about a Hippopotamus head slowly moving from one side of the ceiling to the other, and of having fluttering moths stuck between his toes. When he was three and a half, ...
read more
Loose Tubes' Django Bates and Mark Lockheart Interiewed at All About Jazz
Source:
All About Jazz
Twenty years after legendary British big band Loose Tubes played its farewell gigs at Ronnie Scott's Club in London, its first live album, Dancing On Frith Street (Lost Marble Records, 2010), became Jazzwise magazine's Archive Album of 2010. In the intervening decades, the band's members had spread across the British and international jazz scenes to become some of the most influential players around. The quality and power of the music on the album served as a welcome reminder of the ...
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Jazz at Snape Proms 2010 - A Star Line-Up
Source:
Michael Ricci
Snape Maltings Concert Hall, set in the beautiful Suffolk countryside, is one of the loveliest music venues in the UK.
This year's Snape Proms brings yet more diversity to Snape Maltings Concert Hall with a programme that is both exciting and innovative. Maceo Parker brings the audience to its feet on the first weekend, Sunday 1 August at 7:30pm with one of the greatest ever exponents of funk. He navigates between James Brown's 1960s soul and George Clinton's 1970s freaky ...
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Pianist/Composer Django Bates Interviewed at AAJ
Source:
All About Jazz
July, 2008: It's been 13 years since British keyboard player and composer Django Bates released the third album in his “four seasons" series, Winter Truce (And Homes Blaze) (Winter & Winter, 1995). That album followed close behind Autumn Fire (And Green Shoots) (Winter & Winter, 1994) and Summer Fruits (And Unrest) (Winter & Winter, 1993).
It has long been Bates's intention to complete the series with a spring-themed album, and in June, 2008 he finally did so with Spring Is ...
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Before NEC Residency, Django Bates Writes Own Biography
Source:
All About Jazz
In Anticipation of His New England Conservatory Residency, December 7 - 8, Django Bates Has Supplied His Own Biography.
Django was born in a house near New Beckenham Station. A ropy, semitone flat D'Almaine Piano was the most fascinating toy in the house. He found the clatter of railway workers working throughout the night comforting, but had recurring nightmares about a Hippopotamus head slowly moving from one side of the ceiling to the other, and of having fluttering moths stuck ...
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Pernille Bevort
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Jonny Mansfield
vibraphone
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Konstantin Ivchuk
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After The Last Sky
From: After the Last SkyBy Django Bates
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