CURATION
-
from this page:
by Matrix
Network Node
-
Name:
Bill Laurance
-
City/Place:
London
-
Country:
United Kingdom
Life & Work
-
Bio:
Pianist, keyboardist and composer Bill Laurance’s music evokes a striking sense of time and place. As an original member of 4-time Grammy Award-winning, globetrotting, genre-defying group Snarky Puppy, Laurance has toured the world countless times, playing hundreds of concerts to tens of thousands of fans worldwide.
His fearless artistic instincts now see him leaping into a boundary-defying solo soundworld for his fifth album, the cryptically titled, Cables. The first album to be released on Laurance’s newly launched Flint imprint, the record’s eight melodically-rich songs dive deep into multi-layered textures of electro-acoustic keyboards, piano and drum machines. All these components are deployed to give voice to the album’s powerful overarching theme, which Laurance explains: “Cables is my first concept album, which was originally inspired by the film Transcendent Man, a documentary about the controversial technologist Ray Kurtzweil’s prediction that we will have created a conscious robot by the year 2029. While this feels somewhat frightening, I’m equally excited by the idea – it obviously has profound implications for the way our society functions.”
These experiences have fed directly into his four solo albums, with each drawing inspiration from the people and places he’s encountered, often distilling them into powerful musical portraits. This sensory, cinematic dimension to his music has perhaps inevitably led to a move into scoring music for films, most recently for the feature documentary Remember My Name, about the life and career of David Crosby, and his first feature film score for Un Traductor, with both receiving nominations at Sundance Film Festival 2017 and 2018 respectively.
Creating music that retains a human element at its core is the key to Cables’ powerful musical statement – which is one that Laurance admits looks at both the possibilities and perils of our permanently plugged-in world: “There's no question that this album has a darkness to it. I am painting the picture of a dystopian world ruled by technology. But I'm also interested in human interaction with technology. This record is trying to embrace technology and celebrate the coming together of man and machine. As Ray Kurtzweil himself says: God will exist – and we will realise our full potential, when man and machine become one.”
Heartfelt and complex, sophisticated and soulful, menacing and mesmerising, Cables is as reflective as it is exhilarating. Laurance has unveiled his new widescreen musical vision that’s a big step forward for this master of sonic storytelling.
The musical curiosity that lies at the heart of Cables, which is released in March 2019, and follows a frenetic run of solo albums that include Live at the Union Chapel and the African-funk of Aftersun (2016), the strings-led Flint (2014) and electronica edged Swift (2015), are the natural continuation of the 37-year-old Laurance’s lifelong infatuation with the piano. This began with a childhood love of ragtime, while he showed his determination early on by working through the classical grades and earning his keep over three summers of a Soho restaurant residency playing jazz standards.
Attending the University of Leeds, he majored in classical composition and, thanks to the college’s open ethos, also managed to explore jazz, funk and drum’n’bass in his final performance. Since then he’s honed the melodic immediacy of this approach, along with his intense improvisational prowess, forging a distinctive personal style that embraces English classical, electronica and jazz-rock sensibilities, alongside gritty contemporary grooves. In the early-noughties, a twenty-something Laurance was trying to make a living on the Leeds music scene, when an unremarkable but timely pick-up gig presented itself with a young bassist called Michael League in singer Michael Solomon Williams’ band. Gigs in the north of England forged a friendship with League, who happened to be looking for a new piano player, and League invited Laurance to the US to record the first Snarky Puppy album, The Only Constant, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Since then, Laurance has clocked up recordings and or performances with such renowned artists as David Crosby, Morcheeba, Salif Keita, Terence Blanchard, Susana Baca, Lalah Hathaway, Laura Mvula, Jacob Collier, Musiq Soul Child, Khalid Sansi, Chris Potter, Lionel Loueke, Carlos Malta, The Metropole Orchestra and the WDR Big Band. He has also worked extensively in the dance world with companies including Alvin Ailey, Ballet Rambert, Matthew Bourne's Adventures in Motion Pictures, Phoenix Dance, Northern Ballet Theatre and the English National Ballet. He's composed music for a variety of different clients including Apple Mac, Sky Broadband, Nokia and Hewlett Packard and is currently working on three separate commissions for Big Band, Orchestra and Choir.
He is a champion of cutting-edge keyboard developments and is endorsed by: Moog, Mellotron, Sequential, Korg, Nord, Roli Seaboard, Yamaha, Roland, Arp Odyssey, Keyscape, Sound Brenner, Native Instruments and MXR. Alongside Laurance’s touring as a solo artist and with Snarky Puppy, he is the Artist in residence at Morley College London, is a passionate educator and continues to give clinics at music institutions all over the world.
—Mike Flynn, Jazzwise Magazine
Clips (more may be added)
I created this matrix so the world could discover elemental cultural genius here in Bahia: João do Boi (rest in power), Roberto Mendes, Raymundo Sodré and magisterial others. To make these artists discoverable worldwide though, there's a catch: The matrix must encompass so far as possible ALL CREATORS EVERYWHERE.
The Integrated Global Creative Economy, uncoiling from this sprawling Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix.
The mathematics of the small world phenomenon transforming the creative universe into a creative village wherein all are connected by short pathways to all.
Tap the crosses on somebody's Matrix Page to recommend that person for that category.
(Crosses visible when you are logged in)
The crosses will turn green.
That person/category will appear in your My Curation & Recommendations.
You will appear in that person's Incoming Curation and Recommendations.
You and the person you are recommending will be pulled by mathematical gravity to within DISCOVERABLE distance of EVERYBODY ELSE INSIDE the Matrix.
In a small world great things are possible.
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
Salvador is our base. If you plan to visit Bahia, there are some things you should probably know and you should first visit:
www.salvadorbahiabrazil.com
Conceived under a Spiritus Mundi ranging from the quilombos and senzalas of Cachoeira and Santo Amaro to Havana and the provinces of Cuba to the wards of New Orleans to the South Side of Chicago to the sidewalks of Harlem to the townships of South Africa to the villages of Ireland to the Roma camps of France and Belgium to the Vienna of Beethoven to the shtetls of Eastern Europe...*
Sodré
*...in conversation with Raymundo Sodré, who summed up the irony in this sequence by opining for the ages: "Where there's misery, there's music!" Hence A Massa, anthem for the trod-upon folk of Brazil, which blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south until Sodré was silenced, threatened with death and forced into exile...
And hence a platform whereupon all creators tend to accessible proximity to all other creators, irrespective of degree of fame, location, or the censor.
Matrix Ground Zero is the Recôncavo, bewitching and bewitched, contouring the resplendent Bay of All Saints (end of clip below, before credits), absolute center of terrestrial gravity for the disembarkation of enslaved human beings (and for the sublimity these people created), the bay presided over by Brazil's ineffable Black Rome (seat of the Integrated Global Creative Economy* and where Bule Bule is seated below, around the corner from where we built this matrix as an extension of our record shop).
Assis Valente's (of Santo Amaro, Bahia) "Brasil Pandeiro" filmed by Betão Aguiar
Betão Aguiar
("Black Rome" is an appellation per Caetano, via Mãe Aninha of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá.)
*Darius Mans holds a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT, and lives between Washington D.C. and Salvador da Bahia.
Between 2000 and 2004 he served as the World Bank’s Country Director for Mozambique and Angola. In that capacity, Darius led a team which generated $150 million in annual lending to Mozambique, including support for public private partnerships in infrastructure which catalyzed over $1 billion in private investment.
Darius was an economist with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, where he worked closely with the U.S. Treasury and the IMF to establish a framework to avoid debt repudiation and to restructure private commercial debt in Brazil and Chile.
He taught Economics at the University of Maryland and was a consultant to KPMG on infrastructure projects in Latin America.
Replete with Brazilian greatness, but we listened to Miles Davis and Jimmy Cliff in there too; visitors are David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR/WXPN
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay (they paid).
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
Pardal/Sparrow
Ex Terra Brasilis
Wolfram MathWorld
UNIVERSAL
Alicia Svigals
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Luciano Calazans
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Gustavo Caribé
J Velloso
Lázaro Ramos
Fernando Guerreiro
Maria Marighella
Russell Okung
Bule Bule
Caetano Veloso
RÁDIO MATRIX