Exciting New Sounds In British Jazz: Trish Clowes

Trish Clowes is one of the most fantastic and bright new sounds in British Jazz. Her songs have a fantastic orchestral line up which is fronted expertly by her saxophone. Fantastic sections of improvisation interweave perfectly with the more melodically structured elements of her compositions and the vast range of instruments presents an exploration into a wide spectrum of timbres. 'Tangent' is a mouthwatering debut and not one to be missed! We caught up with Trish to hear about the album and her unique sounds influences:

Hi Trish
Who are your main musical influences In Jazz?

When I was a teenager I would play through various tunes from the fake books with my friends and after a while I realised all my favourite tunes were written by the same person – Wayne Shorter. So I started checking out his albums, then I went to see him live with Danilo Perez, John Patitucci and Brain Blade, and that was it. Hooked for life.

Iain Ballamy is also a big influence on me, more so because I know him personally. I have always loved Ella Fitzgerald right from childhood, and in more recent years I have become a huge fan of Lee Konitz and Joe Lovano.

How would you describe your sound in your own words

Well Wayne told Iain Ballamy (in an interview for JazzUK a while back) he reckons his sound is like the inner core of a carrot… I’d like to think there’s a bit of Wayne and Iain in my playing but I’m not sure what vegetable I would be…?

Bit of a strange one but what's your favorite instrument outside of the sax and why?

Well, that’s difficult. I love instruments with deep timbres – cello/bass. But the piano has been such an important part of my life… And how can you not love the drums?!

Congratulations on your recent place on the BBC Introducing stage at Cheltenham. How did this come about?

It’s a relatively new scheme I think. You submit tracks to the BBC Introducing website and you select the ‘Jazz on Radio 3’ option. Then your music gets listened to by Jamie Cullum, Jez Nelson and Gilles Peterson who pick out bands to play – fantastic opportunity. Cheltenham is a great jazz festival.

Have you got any exciting projects or tours coming up ?

I’m lucky enough to have Martin France playing on a couple of my gigs this summer – one at Harrow Arts Centre on May 13th and one at Swanage Jazz Festival on July 10th. He’s on so many of my favourite records – can’t wait!

For the future, I’m writing some jazz quartet/string quartet music which I hope will be recorded at the end of this year/beginning of 2012. And I’m hoping to organise a small festival with a composer, Luke Styles – watch this space…

Theres a wide range of instruments and timbres on the album which I suppose could be perceived as rare in jazz such as the violin parts. Was this something you consciously had in mind for the tracks when you wrote them, or was it something that came about another way?

I wrote ‘Sketch’ specifically for orchestra and jazz quintet. I spent about 9 months dreaming that up, although I’ve been hearing orchestral sounds in my head for years. It was an incredible learning process, putting all those ideas into a reality. In the last few months of writing I spent hours listening to other orchestral music (a lot of Prokofiev) and picked out the textures I liked – for instance there’s a brilliant moment in Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No2 where he uses oboe and muted trumpet – I used that instrumentation. I guess it’s like painting a picture – choosing your colours and textures for the rght moment. ‘Prelude to a Sketch’ and ‘Search’ were also specifically written for their respective instrumentation. All the other tracks were arrangements of existing pieces.

The album seems to be dominated by improvisation which gives it a real fresh sound. Even the parts that probably aren't improvised have that sense about them, was this a definite effort on your part?

That’s good to hear because that really is my aim with compositions – the writing shouldn’t compromise the space for creative improvisation. Obviously, the more people involved, the harder that is, and the other extreme is no good either –the written parts should be interesting to play too, otherwise why bother?

How do you tend to write your pieces and themes?

I generally sing melodies in my head then write them down. Sometimes I come up with them on the sax. I also think of what kind of textures I want, sometimes I get ideas from listening to other music. I went to a contemporary concert last week and I got loads of ideas for getting percussive sounds out of string instruments from that. I usually have reams of sketches and scrap of ideas that hang around for ages and then from those I put together the form/shape of the piece. Then I start the arranging process. I usually work at the piano, but I try to hear as much in my head as possible.

Trish's Website