Andy Sheppard Jazz musician and composer

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Andy Sheppard tenor and soprano saxophones
Eivind Aarset guitar
Michel Benita double bass
Sebastian Rochford drums
Tipping Point
I Want To Vanish
Aoidh, Na Dean Cadal Idir, Part 1
Origin Of Species
They Aren’t Perfect And Neither Am I
Medication
Aoidh, Na Dean Cadal Idir, Part 2
The Impossibility Of Silence
I See Your Eyes Before Me
A Letter
Aoidh, Na Dean Cadal Idir, Part 3
Looking For Ornette

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Tipping Point

 

Surrounded by Sea, Andy Sheppard’s third ECM album, is a strongly atmospheric recording, and one whose associative title seems especially apt. As the saxophonist observes, the sea in question is mostly calm, but storms and squalls can arise in a moment. British Islanders are fine-tuned to such sudden fluctuations: “Coming from England, I’ve grown up with the physical awareness of being surrounded by sea.”

The album adds Norwegian guitarist Eivind Aarset to the line-up of Sheppard’s widely acclaimed Trio Libero (refer to the 2011 recording of the same name, ECM 2252), making a new quartet with a different emphasis. “I see the quartet as the next step on from Trio Libero. Libero started out as an improvising trio. A lot of the material was drawn from our improvisation and turned into tunes. With this new album I wanted to retain the same musicality but move things in a new direction with the addition of harmony and subtle grooves.” With Sheppard’s compositions and direction to the fore, and Aarset’s ambient drones and washes of sound integrated as quasi-orchestral elements, priorities have shifted. The addition of a fourth player has, paradoxically, opened up more space in the music. Eivind’s textural soundscapes, his subtly layered guitar and electronics, seem to give Sheppard more room to move as well as a harmonic foundation to play off.

Threaded in between Sheppard’s strong new pieces is an extended and compelling meditation upon a Gaelic traditional song, “Aoidh, Na Dean Cadal Idir” (Aiodh, Don’t Sleep At All). It’s a piece associated in recent years with Hebridean folk singer Julie Fowlis, from whom Sheppard learned it.

“I was in the process of developing a project with Julie which never came to fruition. To illustrate how I wanted to ‘dress’ her music I took her a cappella version of ‘Aoidh’ and Michel, Eivind and I recorded separately our parts around her beautiful voice. This in fact gave me the initial idea of forming a band with this line-up. When we recorded the tune as a quartet the music seemed to just come into the room – [producer] Manfred [Eicher] waved his arms to make us continue playing and the result was an extended version – he then suggested we could divide the tune up and weave it through the record. It seems only fitting that the song that brought this line-up together is now a recurrent theme through the album. Also I remember, from talking with Julie, that in the Gaelic tradition when someone teaches you a song it’s your responsibility to pass it on …”

The other non-original in the programme is Elvis Costello’s “I Want To Vanish”. “Michel Benita introduced me to this song and I fell in love with it. I also recorded and toured with Elvis some years ago in John Harle’s Terror and Magnificence project.”

Throughout the album Sheppard plays some of his most lyrical saxophone, both on his own pieces and on the tunes contributed by Michel Benita and Seb Rochford. The rapport between bassist and drummer, demonstrated on Trio Libero, is evident throughout Surrounded by Sea.

 

The album concludes with a dedication to Ornette Coleman whose free spirit and expressive originality are a permanent reference. “When I composed and whenever I play ‘Looking for Ornette’ it’s exactly what I’m trying to do…”

Andy Sheppard Web album

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Surrounded by Sea was recorded in August and September 2014 in the responsive natural acoustics of Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI.

Andy Sheppard’s first leader date for ECM was the 2008 recording Movements In Colour (where Eivind Aarset was one of the featured guitarists). In addition to the aforementioned Trio Libero album Sheppard can also be heard with Carla Bley and Steve Swallow on Trios (ECM 2287, recorded 2012), and on ten of Carla Bley’s albums on the ECM distributed WATT label, beginning with Fleur Carnivore in 1988. Sheppard has previously recorded as a leader for Island/Antilles, Blue Note, Verve, Label Bleu and Provocateur, written music for ensembles of every size including his Saxophone Massive project with up to 200 players, and been featured as soloist with great jazz composers and arrangers including George Russell and Gil Evans.

Andy Sheppard and Michel Benita have been crossing paths since the 1980s. In 2008 Sheppard, Benita and Sebastian Rochford came together in a project at the Coutances Jazz Festival in northern France. It was here that Sheppard first glimpsed the potential of this particular musical combination.

Seb Rochford, whose interest in jazz was first sparked by witnessing an Andy Sheppard concert in Aberdeen, has meanwhile made his own distinctive contributions to it, with his bands including Polar Bear. Rochford’s resumé has embraced work with everyone from Babyshambles to Herbie Hancock, from Brian Eno to Patti Smith. He has said in interviews that the recording of Trio Libero opened up his perceptions about choosing when not to play: this awareness of the musical and dynamic power of restraint also belongs to Surrounded by Sea.

Each quartet member is also a bandleader in his own right, and Michel Benita, French bassist born in Algiers, will shortly be recording with his Ethics quintet (with Eivind Aarset, Mathieu Michel, and Philippe Garcia, and Mieko Miyazaki on koto) for ECM. Benita has played with numerous jazz musicians including Dewey Redman, Archie Shepp, Lee Konitz, Kenny Wheeler, Joe Lovano, Steve Kuhn, Michel Portal and many more.

Eivind Aarset’s ECM album Dream Logic was released in 2012. Aarset recently recorded again for ECM in an improvising quartet with Tigran Hamasyan, Arve Henriksen and Jan Bang. Other ECM appearances include Nils Petter Molvӕr’s influential Khmer and Solid Ether, Small Labyrinths with Marilyn Mazur’s Future Song, Arild Andersen’s Electra, John Hassell’s Last Night The Moon Came…, Ketil Bjørnstad’s La Notte, and Food’s Mercurial Balm.

The Andy Sheppard Quartet plays at the ECM label night at the Jazzahead fair in Bremen on April 25, and follows with concerts, club gigs and festival appearances in Hungary, Belgium, Germany, France and the United Kingdom. For more information about upcoming concerts click here.

 

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