Realising that my last post was in January, I thought I’d better updated the millions of people who want to keep track of my music…

Firstly, my main achievement of 2019 was my successful participation in Sound and Music‘s New Voices programme.  This is an incredible scheme designed to help composers make changes to, and effect development within their work.  I used my time on the programme to translate my ideas that I’ve been developing with Fragments and other small groups to a larger setting.  Here’s a sample of what I did!

I’ll be releasing the full, hour-long performance before the end of the year so please subscribe to my YouTube channel to keep updated about that.

Also:

• I toured a couple of times throughout the year with my quartet and we recorded our third album.  It’ll be released at some point in the new year.
• Fragments released our first album (available on Bandcamp) on Northern Contemporary.  It has been describe as “stunning and impossible to ignore” by Big Beautiful Noise (although people are doing their best…), “an absorbing and compelling listening experience” by The Jazz Mann, and a “dense, imaginatively detailed and uncompromising diary of a virtuosic Improv group” by Jazzwise.
• Imminently due for release, also on Northern Contemporary, is my piece Pale Blue Dot, recorded live at Jazz at the Lescar and with liners notes written by Jez Matthews.  You can actually already pick up a pre-release copy at the Lescar, Sheffield, on that brilliant Wednesday Jazz night.
• In October I went on tour by myself, visiting different cities and playing with the brilliant local musicians the UK has to offer.  I performed in Birmingham, Glasgow, Keighley, London, Manchester, Norwich, Salford, Sheffield and Todmorden, with Mick Beck, Seth Bennett, Tony Bevan, Matthew Bourne, Olie Brice, Chris Dowding, Mark Hanslip, John Jasnoch, Dave Kane, Simon Prince, Cath Roberts, Alan Wilkinson and Andrew Woodhead!  I documented each gig and will be uploading to YouTube an extract from each gig every month next year, so please subscribe to my channel if you’re interested in hearing any of that!

I have loads of exciting things lined up for next year, but I’ll save that for another post!