I am very excited to share the news that my new single, ‘The Ness’, is out today! I have made a little video about it, so you can also see and hear about the creative process, just see below.

​Also out today is Louise McMonagle’s performance of my solo cello piece, ‘Round By The Ness’, the precursor to ‘The Ness’ (all of which is explained in the video mentioned above). She sounds utterly incredible, please do take a listen.

The tickets for the ‘A View with a Room’ ALBUM LAUNCH at Wigmore Hall are now available for general sale too! Link here (we decided to add in a few extras to the programme…) I cannot describe how excited we all are about this concert… As a little taster of the sound in that space, here’s my tune ‘Free to Fall’, from my live stream with Ross last year… (I’ve only just put this up on YouTube).

And while we’re on the subject of duo, Ross and I got a fab review in the Shropshire Star from Andrew Petch for our gig for Shropshire Music Trust at the end of February. You can read it here… and we’ll be back in Shrewsbury with MY IRIS during the album launch tour, playing at The Hive for the Shrewsbury Jazz Network on May 14th.

So great to be able to share this with everyone! This link takes you to my first single, the title track, ‘A View with a Room’ … you can also pre-order the album from all your favourite places, and watch a little trailer video I made 🙂

Coming up in April & May across the UK… MY IRIS are heading all over the place to celebrate the release of ‘A View with a Room’ on Greenleaf Music. We cannot wait to get stuck in… !! Massive thank you to Ina Wieczorek … & to Arts Council England for supporting this tour.

For all the details see my dates page. The tour includes a very special album launch at Wigmore Hall on April 23rd. So excited to explore our sounds in that phenomenal space!!

I am extremely proud to announce that my new album with my glorious band MY IRIS is coming out on Greenleaf Music, directed by Dave Douglas, on April 22nd!

You can now view/pre-order the album on Bandcamp. And here’s a news post on the Greenleaf Music website.

Huge thank you to Chris Montague, Ross Stanley and James Maddren for their incredible playing and inspiring me to write my best music, and to Dave Douglas and the Greenleaf team.

More details to be announced very soon, including an extensive UK tour and singles…!

 

 

Coming up next month…

Ross & I will be playing two concerts… the first on February 17th at the Elgar Room, Royal Albert Hall for their Late Night Jazz series (9.30pm start), tickets here.

Then on February 25th we’re playing at Shrewsbury School (Maidment Building) for the Shropshire Music Trust (7.30pm). Tickets here.

Programme includes our own music, Ellington, Vivaldi, Dupré & more… can’t wait.

Here we are at Wigmore Hall last year, playing our own version of some Vivaldi….

(photo above by Dannie Price)

MY IRIS have now recorded a new album at Livingston Studios in north London (see photos below)… and now we’re in the mixing phase… I can’t announce much more at this stage, but I am very excited about what we got down, and I can’t wait to share it with you all in due course. People coming along to our gig in Sheffield on October 22nd will get a sneak preview!

In the meantime, I’m involved in a very different type of album release… On November 19th, Orchestra of the Swan’s new album ‘Labyrinths’ is coming out on Signum Classics. I’m playing on three of the tracks, one of which is a new piece of mine called ‘Bounce’ (for strings and solo sax). I will be appearing live with the orchestra on November 16th in Stratford-Upon-Avon, and November 26th in Coventry (see my dates page for more details).

Finally, I’m going to be playing a duo gig with cellist Louise McMonagle – some of you might remember we were supposed to play at Punkt Birmingham last year. We’re playing in a double bill on November 25th at the Hexagon Theatre within Mac Birmingham, a night that is being promoted by the legend who is Tony Dudley-Evans.

I have loads more on the horizon after Christmas, a few of the dates are up, but there are many more to come… I’ll leave you with a few photos by Daniel Devlin from my trio gig at the Crypt in Camberwell with Chris Montague and Ross Stanley back in August – absolutely adore playing at that venue.

More live performances are emerging… I’m playing duo with Ross Stanley for Cadogan Hall’s returning lunchtime series on August 10th… gig starts at midday, 2 sets. You have to pre-book for Covid safety reasons, but it’s free to stand, and then £5 to sit. Info here. Ross and I have also just recorded a duo album at Wigmore Hall (huge thank you to the hall’s team for having us – photo below), so at some point down the road, we’re very much looking forward to sharing that with the world… But in the meantime, if you’re able, you can hear us at this gig!

In the Autumn I’ll be playing some more concerts with Orchestra of the Swan (details yet to be announced), but I’m excited to say that they have also made me their Associate Artist for the coming season… This includes a commission for me to write a piece for saxophone and orchestra, the premiere of which will be on April 26th 2022 in Stratford… very excited about this. Especially as the legendary clarinettist and conductor Michael Collins will be conducting the concert!

I also did a recording session for Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian at All Saints Church in Tooting this week, with players from the London Symphony Orchestra, Tim Giles on drums, and Jon Hargreaves conducting. Cevanne is making an album for NMC Recordings, and it’s going to be very special… (For those of you that don’t know, I commissioned her a few years back to write for MY IRIS/Emulsion). You can check out more info on Cevanne and this fabulous project on her website and Facebook page.

Finally, the set that MY IRIS recorded/filmed at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall is still available if you missed it, you can still watch it here… featuring mostly new tunes, plus Free to Fall from our last album. It looks and sounds great – so a big thank you to the engineer and filming crew at B Music – and gives you all a sneak preview of what our new album might sound like (recording end of the summer).

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Streaming tonight at 7pm on YouTube & Facebook… MY IRIS recorded a set for Jazzlines at Symphony Hall in Birmingham last month & now you can hear the results! The sound in the hall is phenomenal… Nearly all new music, ahead of our next recording, so this is a bit of a preview… Big thanks to the Jazzlines team plus Luke the sound engineer & filming team Broaden.

Click here for Symphony Hall’s Facebook page where you can find the stream. Alternatively, click here to watch on YouTube.

Exciting news…!! At the end of August MY IRIS will be recording a new album at Livingston studios in north London. Despite a very strange year, we’ve managed to develop an album’s worth of new material over the various streams and gigs we’ve done for the 606 Club, Guildford Jazz, Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Cambridge Modern Jazz Club, and Jazzlines at Symphony Hall in Birmingham (broadcast of this coming very soon…). A HUGE thank you to all of these people for making these events happen, and another HUGE thank you to everyone who has donated and bought our music via Bandcamp this year – you have literally kept our music alive!!

If you would like to donate towards the costs of the new MY IRIS album, I have set up this PayPal link (or see the donate button below)

A little bit about the music to come…

One of the newest tunes is called ‘The Ness’… This was on our GSMD stream back in May, and you’ll be able to hear another performance of it on our Jazzlines set. I developed this tune out of a cello solo I wrote for Louise McMonagle last year – ‘Round By the Ness’ – written in response to images and sounds captured along the East Neuk of Fife coastline by filmmaker Rose Hendry (director of my ‘Abbott & Costello’ music video). Here are a few of the images…

Other very new tunes include ‘Morning Song’ (also on the Jazzlines set, written in the morning…), and ‘Almost’ (heard only by attendees of our Cambridge gig!). We’ll also be recording a version of ‘Time’ (home-recorded duo version with Ross currently available on Bandcamp), ‘No Idea’ (which appeared at our 606 gig), and these two tunes:

‘Amber’ (for Amber Bauer of Donate4Refugees)

‘A view with a room’ (a play on the book title ‘A room with a view’ – by EM Forster – and a reference to online experiences over the last year…)

I am also plotting some kind of Q&A session online, but just researching the best and (web) safest way to do this… 🙂