Empirically speaking: residency announced

Empirical will be Nimmo artists in residence in 2020 at the Wiltshire Music Centre in Bradford on Avon. Three concerts, a pop-up jazz lounge partnering with Bath Festivals and Wiltshire Music Centre are involved plus the premiere of new work …

Published: 27 Nov 2019. Updated: 3 years.

Empirical will be Nimmo artists in residence in 2020 at the Wiltshire Music Centre in Bradford on Avon. Three concerts, a pop-up jazz lounge partnering with Bath Festivals and Wiltshire Music Centre are involved plus the premiere of new work commissioned during the residency.

The residency begins on 8 February with Empirical and guest Gwilym Simcock (previously a Nimmo artist in residence). On 15 March the Wiltshire Youth Jazz Orchestra are guests. From 15-20 May, Empirical’s pop-up jazz lounge will be at the Bath Festival, and the band also will play the Old Theatre Royal in Bath on 20 May. In October Empirical premiere the residency commission suite to be then recorded and released in two years time. Before that there will be a live album next year.

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2019 Highlight: Solo bass from Larry Grenadier

It is not only Jeff Ballard from the Brad Mehldau trio who struck out again in 2019 as a leader. The famous piano trio’s Larry Grenadier was also highly visible with The Gleaners, which had a mid-February post-Valentine day’s digital release first, …

Published: 27 Nov 2019. Updated: 3 years.

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It is not only Jeff Ballard from the Brad Mehldau trio who struck out again in 2019 as a leader. The famous piano trio’s Larry Grenadier was also highly visible with The Gleaners, which had a mid-February post-Valentine day’s digital release first, which happens to fall shortly after Grenadier’s 53rd birthday, followed by CD and vinyl formats a week later.

A Manfred Eicher-produced studio album on of course ECM which was recorded in New York in late-2016 will be that rarity: a bass solo album an endeavour few bassists have ever successfully traversed before.

The only two marlbank can think of are Peter Kowald’s 1995 free-jazz classic Was Da Ist and probably a little closer in outlook Eberhard Weber’s beautiful Pendulum again from the 1990s.

Grenadier, who we think is one of the world’s best jazz bassists, was “inspired by Agnès Varda’s film The Gleaners and I” according to ECM, and the album includes his so far unnamed originals, a dedication to Oscar Pettiford who remains a strong influence on another of the world’s great bassists, Christian McBride, plus George Gershwin, John Coltrane, Paul Motian, Rebecca Martin and Wolfgang Muthspiel material. On the Grenadier website there is a little more elaboration, the site author noting the presence of “a pair of works written especially for Grenadier by guitarist, longtime friend and fellow ECM artist Wolfgang Muthspiel” and an instrumental interpretation of a song by his wife the singer-songwriter Rebecca Martin.