I just released a new album! Surprise is a duo live recording with vibraphonist Corey Mwamba, from a show in London. It’s all improvised, and provides a beautiful stopping off point in my musical journey with Corey thus far.
We first played together over a decade ago, brought together by Orphy Robinson for a trio gig in Derby. There was an instant musical chemistry, and the next stage was me playing in Corey’s group Argentum at the London Jazz Festival a couple of years later. Since then we’ve played a handful of shows together – always a rich experience, and always with the intention of doing more.
This latest opportunity came when a friend who was booking a percussion-based show asked if I could do a set with a vibraphonist – the tuned percussion being the hook, the improvised nature of it providing the trust that we’d bring something that would ‘fit’… And we did. There’s something wonderful but also otherworldly about playing improvised music to an audience who have no idea who you are, and about whom you know very little. The music stands apart from the relationship between artist and audience in a way that I’m largely unfamiliar with (the nature of my career means that I’m often playing to audiences with whom I have a much longer musical relationship).
You can hear the album here, and buy it if you like it:
As a result, it took me quite a few listens to the recording to hear what’s in there. I was remembering the experience of not knowing, or hearing and being unable to contextualise. Fortunately, I stuck with the music’s leadings and we came up with this. It is, to my ears, a deeply satisfying album, with many twists and turns across its 25 minutes. Playing with Corey is always a joy. He’s an inspiring human and a truly masterful musician and improvisor. More soon, I hope. x
Note: this album was released to my Bandcamp subscribers last December, four months before it became public. Now that it’s public it’s no longer part of the subscriber back catalogue (though, obviously, all those who got it as part of their subscription own it for ever 🙂 ) – there are a number of other collaborative recordings that have been released to subscribers over the last couple of months that will be coming out publicly soon. When they do, they’ll cease to be part of the Subscriber back catalogue too. So, if you want everything, there’s no better time to subscribe than now. If you want to fill in the blanks, you can of course buy the albums that you’re missing from your collection as individual downloads – the pricing is v. cheap to reflect the otherwise overly expensive task of trying to keep on top of all this amazing new music 😉
Nice recording and a very enjoyable