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Martin Speake
Citing Lee Konitz, Charlie Parker, Warne Marsh, Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, Ornette Coleman, Steve Coleman, Rabi Abou Khalil, and Paul Motian as major influences, Martin has developed a personal musical voice that expresses a deep understanding of the history and language of Jazz with individuality as an improviser that is intelligent, melodic, cool, complex, direct, beautiful and profound. Born in Barnet, North London in 1958, Martin was inspired to take up the saxophone at the age of 16. From 1977-81, he studied Classical Saxophone at Trinity College of Music, where he was awarded the prestigious Dame Ruth Railton prize for woodwind playing. He first came to public attention as a founder member of the award winning Saxophone Quartet ‘Itchy Fingers’ during the height of the UK’s so called ‘80’s Jazz Revival’ when a host of young musicians including Courtney Pine, Andy Sheppard, Django Bates, Iain Ballamy and the big bands of the Jazz Warriors and Loose Tubes were acclaimed as the leaders of an emerging generation of UK jazz talent.
2004 saw the release of three different cds including The Exploring Standards Trio (33 Records) with bassist Mick Hutton and drummer Tom Skinner, a ballad album My Ideal (Basho Records) with American pianist Ethan Iverson (The Bad Plus), and The Journey (Black Box) with Indian musicians Dharambir Singh and Sarvar Sabri. Autumn 2004 he toured with Sam Rivers in his UK big band on a Contemporary Music Network tour. In 2005 he celebrated the music of Charlie Parker with a newly formed group and touring throughout the country promoting a cd release of the project.
With Itchy Fingers, Martin toured Europe, South America, Africa, Britain and the USA, and recorded two albums. In 1988, he left the group to develop his own projects, and establish himself as a composer and improvisor.
His studies at Canada’s renowned Banff Centre for the Arts in 1990, under the artistic direction of Steve Coleman, and alongside peers that included keyboard players Andy Milne and Ethan Iverson, and trumpeter Ralph Alessi, proved to be pivotal and catalytic in Martin’s subsequent development as a creative musician. Martin is as comfortable and fluent playing personal interpretations of the music of Charlie Parker with his quartet, or with free improvising drummer Mark Sanders, in a duet with Ethan Iverson of the Bad Plus, or with Indian musicians Dharambir Singh and Sarvar Sabri.
In 1999 he received the Peter Whittingham Award to help fund a tour of the UK with The Martin Speake Group. In 2000 he was commissioned to compose music for an international project featuring American drummer Paul Motian, Swedish pianist Bobo Stenson and English bassist Mick Hutton. This group toured in May of that year with funding from the Arts Council of England and toured again in Autumn 2001. Their first cd Change of Heart was released on ECM in April 2006.
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Martin Speake / Alex Maguire: Feathers
by Matt Parker
A partnership which perhaps could and should have developed years ago, saxophonist Martin Speake and pianist Alex Maguire both attended the legendary Barry Jazz School in 1979 which featured an incredible cast of tutors ,including Stan Sulzmann, Keith Tippett, Gordon Beck, Allan Holdsworth and many other A" list British jazz musicians. Amazingly Speake and Maguire failed to meet at this junction and would have to wait nearly 40 years for their paths to finally cross, at a chance meeting in ...
read moreMartin Speake: Intention
by Roger Farbey
Celebrating his 60th birthday in April 2018, Martin Speake has been a stalwart of the British jazz scene for some forty years, initially playing with the saxophone quartet Itchy Fingers. He is lead alto saxophonist in the redoubtable London Jazz Orchestra and his teaching duties extend to Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and London's Royal Academy of Music. In his review of Speake's album Change Of Heart (ECM, 2006), John Kelman summarised the saxophonist's playing perfectly: Speake's playing ...
read moreMartin Speake: The Thinking Fan's Saxophonist
by Duncan Heining
British alto saxophonist, Martin Speake, is one of the most adventurous and articulate musicians in a music peppered with creative artists. That he is not a household name--even within the proscribed and marginalised world of jazz--says more about the times than it does about Speake or his single-minded approach to his art. Speake combines in his music a purposeful curiosity with a love of the jazz tradition. He is equally capable of flights into free improvisation and into ...
read moreMartin Speake: The Unquiet Mind
by Duncan Heining
We have here three very fine CDs from British alto saxophonist, Martin Speake. Speake is classically trained and when I first heard him in the late 90s, he brought to jazz a tone that emphasised the clarity of each note and the purity of the melodic line that was quite unusual in a music more used to the personalised sounds of a Hodges, a Bird, a Desmond or an Ornette. Over the years, his alto playing has perhaps become more ...
read moreMartin Speake: Generations
by John Kelman
British altoist Martin Speake isn't as well-known as he ought to be, but he may well be the clearest successor to the unadorned, warm-toned approach of the legendary Lee Konitz. But while Konitz has undeniably led a career defined by diversity, Speake has stretched considerably farther, with albums ranging from the Indo- centric The Journey (Black Box, 2004) and uniquely modern, guitar-centric take on Charlie Parker (Jazzizit, 2005), to accessible free improvisation with percussionist Mark Sanders on Spark (Pumpkin, 2007) ...
read moreMartin Speake / Mark Sanders: Spark
by John Kelman
British altoist Martin Speake has made a career out of doing things differently. With Exploring Standards (33 Records, 2003) he adopted a decidedly minimalist and miniaturist approach to jazz standards. Charlie Parker (Jazzizit, 2005) presented a modernistic alternative to most of the tributes recorded for the 50th anniversary year of the legendary saxophonist's death. So it should come as no surprise that Spark puts a decidedly personal spin on free improvisation. The idea of an entire album ...
read moreMartin Speake: Change Of Heart
by Budd Kopman
One of the more interesting extra-musical things to observe in jazz is how the connections between musicians happen, and then, of course, how those connections affect the music they produce. In 1993, Martin Speake connected with Paul Motian, and they toured as a trio with bassist Mick Hutton, playing both Speake's and Motian's compositions. Fast forward seven years to 2000 and Speake added Bobo Stenson to the group, playing and composing music that was sensitive to both ...
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