Jazz Articles about Django Bates

Django Bates Beloved: Beloved Bird

by Bruce Lindsay
February 5, 2011

Django Bates claims that he heard Charlie Parker records on the day he was born. Fifty years later, Bates has formed Belovèd, giving life to his longstanding love for Parker's music on his trio's debut, Belovèd Bird. It's an album that ably demonstrates how love means never having to play in the same old way, for this sparklingly inventive album is not a retread of old Parker arrangements, but a reappraisal of the sound--a reconstruction based on Bates' strongly-held belief ...

Django Bates: Spring Is Here (A Long Time Coming But Worth The Wait)

by Chris May
July 14, 2008

July, 2008: It's been 13 years since British composer and keyboards/peck horn player Django Bates released the third album in his “four seasons" series, Winter Truce (And Homes Blaze) (Winter & Winter, 1995). That album followed close behind Autumn Fire (And Green Shoots) (Winter & Winter, 1994) and Summer Fruits (And Unrest) (Winter & Winter, 1993).It has long been Bates's intention to complete the series with a spring-themed album, and in June, 2008 he finally did so with ...

Django Bates: Spring Is Here (Shall We Dance?)

by Chris May
June 16, 2008

One of the true visionary geniuses of British--and indeed all--modern jazz, keyboardist and composer Django Bates is a shaman and synapse twister with a breathtakingly imaginative take on the traditions and structures he recalibrates. His energy is iconoclastic but also sunny and effervescent and benign, shot through with humor and relish of the absurd. His ideas are big and he particularly excels when writing for big bands, two of which--Loose Tubes and Delightful Precipice--have led joyful rococo revolutions on the ...

Django Bates: Winter Truce (And Homes Blaze)

by Chris May
October 30, 2005

Django Bates' Human Chain: Live At The Hackney Empire, London, 24 July 2005

by Chris May
July 31, 2005

After twenty-something years subverting and enlivening the UK jazz scene - with Loose Tubes, Delightful Precipice, and Human Chain, amongst myriad other projects - Django Bates has announced he is leaving the country. Tonight's performance was the last London gig before he relocates to Denmark, to become the inaugural Professor at Denmarks's adventurous, and generously state-funded, Rhythmic Music Conservatory. In '97, of course, Bates famously won the Danish Jazzpar prize, only the second non-American and second Briton so to do.