The Charlie Bates Big Band

The Charlie Bates Big Band: Silhouettes

by Roger Farbey
May 14, 2017

Born in Essex in 1994, British jazz pianist Charlie Bates was introduced to jazz in his teens and later studied for a BMus Jazz degree at the Birmingham Conservatoire. In June 2016, Bates won the Birmingham Conservatoire Jazz Composition prize with an arrangement of Cole Porter's “Everything I Love," adjudicated by Tim Garland. This forty-minute session opens with “Cyanopsia," which essentially means seeing everything with a blue tinge. A strong and memorable head played by the ensemble leads ...