Formative Years for nine-piece jazz/rock band
Good morning! Welcome to my web site, where you can find out about my music, and listen to some of it, as well as my various other ventures over the years.
Latest News
The first movement of the new orchestral version of my 1977/85 Trumpet Concerto (for trumpet and brass band) is complete. The second, slow movement — dedicated in memoriam Duke Ellington who had recently died when I wrote it, with the soloist playing a flugelhorn and featuring bits of Ellington's lovely Mood Indigo floating in and out of the textures — is slowly progressing.
Psychoyogi News
(For newcomers to this site, along with the activities described here, I also play fretless bass guitar in Psychoyogi — see my Biography.)
We recently had a session recording ‘live’ videos of four songs. These were not in front of an audience, hence my scare-quotes, but we did play and record in real time — it was all done in our drummer Jonas’s bedroom! It was good fun, if a little tricky to negotiate the stands for three mics, three cameras and three lights in a very confined space — but we managed. They're all on line now, three on YouTube: Therapy Session, The Magic Tellingbone and Happy Family; and the last one on Facebook: Evening Call.
Our gig at Biddle Bros. in Hackney on 22 July was very successful (apart from one song which fell apart, causing us to restart it!). There was a good crowd who were very responsive and gave us a great reception. We did some new songs and gave the first performance of my own Kapadokya — the first non-Ramsing composition ever played by Psychoyogi! (The main tune for this comes from a piece I wrote back in 1995 for The Europeans. The quickest route to it from here is the Listen page: under ‘And finally, here is the music...’, look for The Europeans: The Turks Are Coming.)
Our current album, Shrine, is still available to download and listen to on iTunes, Spotify and Amazon (among others?).
Older News
- I’ve revisited 60 Minims and made a new realisation of it (the original audio being lost).
- The final movement (but first to be composed) of my new chamber orchestra work Hall of Mirrors is now complete, along with my usual MIDI recording.
- I redid my page on The Europeans, complete with some of the music (by no means all of the pieces) for your listening and dining pleasure. Apart from Psychoyogi it was my main musical activity for a while, until I got back down to Hall of Mirrors (see above).
- There’s a new(ish) page on the site, for the benefit of composers struggling to keep track of their harp pedal settings. Very niche, I know, but it could well be handy for some folks. And yes, I’m well aware that it doesn’t work too well on various types of touch-screen and mobile device, but I’m afraid I can’t dedicate the rest of my life to catering for whatever kind of hybrid device the industry thinks up next! I found this page immensely useful while working on the harp part of Hall of Mirrors.
- Original The Bebop Variations for brass trio recorded with MIDI — listen here.
- New scores of the Trumpet Concerto and — possibly my strangest work — in heaven... to replace old handwritten versions. PDF extracts available to download.
- Original 1974 recording of Formative Years now available for listening to here, on YouTube and on SoundCloud. Real human musicians! Some of them now jazz luminaries.
Apart from all that, naturally, this web site: explore my works, read my biography, keep track of your harp pedal settings, and see what’s on the various other pages. You can also get in touch with me via the Contact form. And for those with a taste for historical technical curiosities, there’s even a page about my NotaFile document — and the document itself.
As well as listening to my MIDI recordings on this site, you can visit my channels on YouTube and SoundCloud to hear the same MIDI realizations of eight of my works, and see the same YouTube videos as you can see here, to get a glimpse of the scores (in most cases). These pieces are available: Hall of Mirrors V, Bebop, lovesongs, The Bossa Nova Variations, Return of the Son of the Bebop Variations, Variations on a Theme of George Harrison, Music for an Imaginary Ballet, Five Pieces for Saxophone Quartet and a little musical joke called Porterstraum.
Also on the Listen page is my standard disclaimer about MIDI recordings, and a note about browser compatibility with the players for YouTube, SoundCloud and plain MP3s embedded in these pages.
And in case anyone’s wondering, what I’m actually looking at in that photo is not the score of Formative Years, but a large owl perched on my wrist.