KIT DOWNES

KIT DOWNES TRIO – KIT DOWNES (piano), CALUM GOURLAY (bass), JAMES MADDREN (drums)

2008 BBC JAZZ AWARD WINNER "RISING STAR"

After attending the Purcell School of Music, Kit is now studying at the Royal Academy of Music (where he is taught by Tom Cawley). Kit plays regularly with the award-winning Empirical, Troyka, The Golden Age of Steam, Martin Speake, James Allsopp, Asaf Sirkis, Zhenya Strigalev and Clark Tracey - and has played with Joe Locke, Seb Rochford, Gilad Atzmon, Gerard Presencer, Stan Sulzmann, Jeff Williams and Eugene Skeef. He has also performed with leading British bands Fraud, Asaf Sirkis’ Inner Noise, Gilad Atzmon’s Orient House Ensemble, Acoustic Ladyland, Nostalgia 77, 2000 Black, Silhouette Brown and Dennis Rollins’ Badbone and Co. He has also worked with up and coming Composer / Songwriter Micachu, with whom he recorded in Abbey Road for Matthew Herbert, recorded for BBC Radio 6 and played at the Sonar Music Festival ’07 in Barcelona. Kit’s work with Empirical has taken him to The North Sea Jazz Festival, The JVC Festivals in New York, Montreal and Newport, and Vancouver Jazz Festival. Empirical won ‘Best Album of the Year 2007’ in Jazzwise and the EBU Award at the North Sea Festival. Kit also won the BBC ‘Rising Star’ Award in 2008.

Kits own trio features Calum Gourlay on bass (Tommy Smith, Martin Speake, Tom Cawley) and James Maddren on drums (Marc Copland, Stan Sulzmann, NYJO) - performing original music inspired by influences ranging from Bela Bartok to Keith Jarrett to Rufus Wainwright.

"Kit Downes is about to emerge as a formidable force in his own right…his originals were haunting, and his hypnotic, Mehldau-influenced playing fizzed with ideas that got hotter by the moment. Three to watch." – John Fordham, JazzUK 2008

“A brilliant soloist who builds ideas slowly into cascades of melodic ideas...His prodigious keyboard skills avoid obvious neo-bop tendencies with highly imaginative tunes and expansive, melodic solos.” – Timeout Magazine 2008

“Downes's trio are a classy but powerful act…providing yet more evidence of the strength of the extraordinary current renaissance (especially noticeable in piano trios) of the UK jazz scene.” – Chris Parker , Vortex Website 2008