Django Bates: Trio

About

Django Bates plays piano, keyboards and tenor horn with the kind of restless curiosity that has kept him one of the most compelling figures in British jazz for decades. He built his reputation through the beloved big band Loose Tubes in the 1980s, then went on to lead his own projects including Human Chain, Delightful Precipice, and Belovèd. His range is genuinely striking: he has written a piano concerto for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, scored theatre productions at the National Theatre and Shakespeare's Globe, and commissioned sixty composers including Laurie Anderson and John Zorn to each write a single bar, which he then stitched into one piece performed by the London Sinfonietta. As a sideman he has worked alongside Bill Bruford, Tim Berne, David Sanborn and Anouar Brahem, among many others. He has also built a serious second life as an educator, holding professorships at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen and at HKB Bern. The Jazzpar Prize and an Ivors Jazz Award sit on his shelf, and The Wire twice named him Best UK Jazz Composer. In short, very few musicians operate at this breadth.