Home » Jazz Articles » Kit Downes
Jazz Articles about Kit Downes
Kit Downes and Tom Challenger: Wedding Music
by Bruce Lindsay
Six improvised pieces of music, created over a three-day residency by two of the UK's most innovative and visionary young players and performed as church organ and saxophone duets. That's Wedding Music, by organist Kit Downes and saxophonist Tom Challenger. Six strange, atmospheric and starkly beautiful pieces of music. Wedding Music was recorded in St Paul's Church, Huddersfield, in Yorkshire--the home of a church organ which Downes describes as “exceptional." It's the culmination of a three-day residency at ...
Continue ReadingKit Downes and Tom Challenger: Wedding Music
by Karl Ackermann
The multiple-award winning pianist Kit Downes and the versatile saxophonist Tom Challenger have the distinction of conceiving one of the most unusual releases in years with Wedding Music. This alliance of these critically praised members of the UK's Loop Collective has produced a superb and unique collection of duets for church organ and tenor sax. While organ and saxophone duos are a rarity even in the realm of the B-3, Downes and Challenger take it to an altogether different level ...
Continue ReadingKit Downes: Light From Old Stars
by Bruce Lindsay
Given pianist/composer Kit Downes' standing in the UK jazz scene it's rather surprising that Light From Old Stars is only the third album he's released under his own name. It's less surprising when his relative youth--he was still in his mid-20s when he recorded this album--and active membership in bands such as Troyka and Stan Sulzmann's Neon are added to the mix. All this musical activity might seem to leave little time for other considerations, but at least one non-musical ...
Continue ReadingKit Downes: Old Stars, New Blues
by Bruce Lindsay
Cheltenham Jazz Festival, Saturday 30th April 2011. The young British pianist and composer Kit Downes has travelled to this west of England town to première his latest composition, Animation Migration, at the Playhouse Theatre. It was an unusual event for a jazz festival. Downes' band played music inspired by the story of evolution and DNA alongside Lesley Barnes' similarly inspired and wonderfully colorful animations, followed by a question and answer session, where Downes and Barnes were joined by scientist and ...
Continue ReadingKit Downes Trio: Quiet Tiger
by Bruce Lindsay
The Kit Downes Trio's first album, Golden (Basho Records, 2009), won a Mercury Music Prize nomination and put the group firmly at the forefront of British jazz. Quiet Tiger finds the Trio eager to move forward, redefining its sound. Not content to rest on the laurels garnered by Golden, pianist and composer Downes has augmented the band, expanding its musical palette with the unusual addition of tenor saxophone, bass clarinet and cello. At heart, though, this is ...
Continue ReadingKit Downes Trio: Quiet Tiger
by Chris May
When it's time to follow up an album nominated for a major, mainstream award such as Britain's Mercury Prize, jazz artists face a conundrum. Having enjoyed a year or so of unprecedented publicity, and keen to keep it coming, the choice is between a carbon copy of the nominated album, designed to maintain the lucrative, but fragile connection with non-specialist critics and listeners, and a less commercially considered trajectory, going where the music dictates. Led Bib's Bring Your ...
Continue ReadingKit Downes: You Have to Be What You Are
by Bruce Lindsay
Kit Downes' career as a jazz musician has, indeed, taken off in a very short time. He's still in his mid-20s, but such is his talent and appetite for music that Downes has become one of the most sought-after keyboardist in Britain, and he's a key presence in a series of cutting-edge bands, with The Golden Age Of Steam, Troyka, Big Cat and his own Kit Downes Trio all springing readily to mind. While the intelligent but ...
Continue Reading
