Jazz Articles about Kit Downes

About Kit Downes

Album Review

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 ...

265

Album Review

Kit Downes Trio: Quiet Tiger

Read "Quiet Tiger" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
February 28, 2011

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 ...

618

Interview

Kit Downes: You Have to Be What You Are

by Bruce Lindsay
September 15, 2010

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 ...

475

Album Review

Kit Downes Trio: Golden

by Bruce Lindsay
January 10, 2010

Golden is the first album by the Kit Downes Trio--and it provides plenty of evidence to support the growing reputations of these three young musicians. The trio, led by pianist Kit Downes, has been together since 2005 when its members were in the early stages of their studies at the Royal Academy of Music. The quality of writing and performance on this album so soon after the players' graduation demonstrates their huge potential and ensures that the album itself is ...