News

December 4, 2024

Since the release of his “To A Walrus” CD, Andrew has been concentrating on working on another CD for release next year - also of his concert music. He has recorded and mixed (with Kirsten) a piece entitled “O dan y Pen Pyrod” (Under the Worm’s Head) - the first of several pieces on the CD inspired by places around Wales which are important to him. This piece is for piano and pre-recorded tape - Andrew plays the piano on the recording. The record will also include a piece called “Glasiad y Dydd dros Ben Dinas” (Daybreak over Dinas Head) - for harp and cello, played by the cellist Nia Harries and the former Royal Harpist to Prince Charles Claire Jones, who also play a work called “A Sad Pavane for these Distracted Times” - originally a keyboard work by the 17th century Welsh composer Thomas Tomkins, arranged by Andrew for Cello and Harp. There will also be a recording of a work for French Horn and live electronics - “Pentre Ifan yn Ystod y Nos” (Pentre Ifan in the course of the night) which will be recorded by Fergus Kerr, the horn player with The Wallace Collection - the live electronics were realised by Carlo Laurenzi at IRCAM, with Andrew and Kirsten: IRCAM is the electronic music resaearch institute in Paris founded by Pierre Boulez. 

Andrew and Kirsten were recently back in Paris ar IRCAM to start work on another new piece for viola and live electronics, again working wth MAX expert Carlo Laurenzi. This was their second visit to IRCAM this year - they were also there for the week-long IRCAM FORUM in March. 

Andrew has also been working on a revised version of “Dorian Terilament”, his work from 1971 recorded live by the group “Come to the Edge”, which consisted of Andrew on bass guitar, keyboards, percussion and viola, Robin Thompson on keyboards, VSC3 synthesiser and soprano sax, and Morris Pert on drums, percussion and vibraphone.

Also, a 4 CD box set of recordings of the live electronic group “Intermodulation”, of which Andrew was a founder member, along with Roger Smalley, Tim Souster and Robin Thompson while he was a student in Cambridge in 1969, has been released by Paradigm Discs - it features the group's performance, along with Mike Ratledge of Soft Machine, of Terry Riley’s Keyboard Studies from the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in London. It is available here:

https://intermodulation.bandcamp.com/album/connections-1970-1974

April 18, 2024

Happy 75th Birthday to Andrew! The new Wallace Collection CD of Andrew's music for brass and live electronics has been released today. For more information, visit https://www.thewallacecollection.world/. You can buy the CD directly from the Wallace Collection's online shop at https://thewallacecollectionshop.world/product/to-a-walrus-cd/. Also, you can hear clips from this album and other works by Andrew at the Tŷ Cerdd website. Tŷ Cerdd named Andrew as their composer of the month. The direct link can be found at https://www.tycerdd.org/cotm-andrew-powell.

March 28, 2024

Andrew was delighted to be told a couple of weeks ago that Ty Cerdd were going to make him their Composer of the Month in April of this year (his birthday month). Ty Cerdd (literal translation - House of Poem/Song) is the organisation based in the Millennium Centre in Cardiff, (see picture below) whose job is to promote Welsh music. Their website can be found at: https://www.tycerdd.org/ The Millennium Centre, based in Cardiff Bay, has several different-sized performance spaces - more than one of which can take a full opera company, as well as more intimate spaces for smaller presentations. The 18th April is also the release date for the new Wallace Collection CD of my music for brass and live electronics. There will be soundfiles of a few of Andrew's favourite pieces of his music up on the Ty Cerdd website.

March 18, 2024

Andrew writes: It was with much sorrow that I heard the news of Steve Harley’s death yesterday (17th March). He and I go back a long way - I’ve known him for over 50 years. I was delighted to work on his first album - “The Human Menagerie” - with the great Geoff Emerick engineering - Steve’s songs were epic, and gave me a huge amount of room to weave my arrangements around his fascinating texts, melodies, and unusually structured songs. His lyrics were highly original - I have always enjoyed working with seriously good lyricists, and Steve was definitely up there. “Sebastian” and “ Death Trip”, among other songs on this album, were among the first arrangements of mine which really got me some attention in the business. I worked on his next two albums as well - “Ritz” and "Tumbling Down” being the standout tracks for me. We did meet occcasionally on our travels, but it was not until 2012 that we worked together again: he phoned me to say he wanted to do a concert of just the first two albums, including a choir and orchestra. This was an offer I couldn't possibly refuse! It was great to be on stage performing these two seminal albums with Steve and his group: there were several concerts in the end. I was very happy to have been invited by Steve to work on these memorable shows with him. As Steve said to me during the final rehearsal, we were still almost kids when we were working on that first album, He was a great talent, and will be sorely missed by many!

March 7, 2024

Andrew did a long interview with Darrel Babidge for the Kate Bush Fan Podcast, about his work with Kate in the 1970s, which appeared last November.

https://www.katebushnews.com/podcast/

https://soundcloud.com/katebushnews/kate-bush-fan-podcast-episode-61-bush-telegraph-andrew-powell-interview

Andrew has also been writing and recording a dozen pieces of “library” music - to be released fairly soon (we will let you know when!), in his home studio with Kirsten, and finishing work on the CD of his brass music with John Wallace and The Wallace Collection: this record was delayed several times over the past three years by the arrival of Covid, and the various lockdown rules in different parts of the U.K. - work commenced on it in early 2020! APP fans will be familiar with John Wallace - he was the lead trumpet and played several solos on the APP's records. There are five works on the record, the first is Ritual, (written in memory of Andrew's uncle who was in the RAF and died in the 2nd World War), for two brass quintets who move around the performing space at the beginning and end - conducted by John Wallace. The second quintet for this recording was the excellent young Scottish group Solstice. The next work is Variations Towards a Theme: for 2 trumpets and live electronics - John Wallace and John Miller appear on this: the next is the most recently completed piece To a Walrus, which is dedicated to John Wallace - the title refers to one of his nicknames in the business: Bede Williams and John Miller play quarter-tone trumpets on this, with Andrew playing piano and various percussion instruments. Fourth title is Plasmogeny II - originally released on a Deux-Elles CD in 2002 - for solo trumpet (John Wallace) tape and live electronics. Excerpts from this work were used in the Hollywood film “Bolden” - about the legendary trumpeter Buddy Bolden, who is often regarded as one of the fathers of jazz. The final work is “Within those radiances…” for brass quintet and live electronics. This work is based around the harmonic series, and heavily influenced by the Tibetan style of dungchen playing. The record will be released on the 18th April - Andrew’s birthday, and will be available on The Wallace Collection’s website - https://thewallacecollection.world - and World of Brass - www.worldofbrass.com - and the usual streaming services.

July 19, 2023

IRCAM

Andrew and Kirsten travelled to Paris at the end of May to work for a couple of days at IRCAM (the electronic music institution founded by Pierre Boulez) with one of their technical experts on a new work for solo horn and live electronics, which will be included in the forthcoming Wallace Colection CD. Recording should take place in early Septemebr, and then we should have a release date for the record.

April 8, 2023

It was with great sadness that I heard the news this morning that my good friend, colleague and collaborator Ian Bairnson had died last night after a long battle with dementia. My sympathies go to his loving and caring wife Leila, who supported him through thick and thin. I shall always remember his great sense of humour - you could rely on Ian to come up wth something to lighten the air if a recording session had got “difficult” - apart from, obviously, his superb guitar playing. Many of the records I worked on benefitted from his guitar-playing genius - I’m not only thinking of the well known ones such as his brilliant solo on Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights”, but also some lesser known ones - a particular favourite of mine is the solo he played on the Elaine Paige album which I co-produced with Tim Rice - on a Dave Townsend song called “Far Side of the Bay.” It’s a gem!

Andrew

December 13, 2022

At last the final recording sessions for the Wallace Collection’s CD of Andrew’s brass music have taken place - in Glasgow on the 5th and 6th November - with the Wallace Collection Quintet conducted by John Wallace, with Kirsten Powell engineering, and Andrew producing. This session has been postponed no less than 5 times because of various changes in Covid regulations! The final piece to be recorded was “Within Those Radiances…”, a work which was first performed by the Wallace collection in December 2000 in London, and is mainly inspired by the ritualisitic music of Tibet. The piece is quite long - some 18 minutes - and also rather difficult technically, so there is quite a large amount of editing to be done, which is ongoing at the moment. Once that has finished we will add all of the “live electronic” effects to the recording, and then mix it. We are still in discussion about a release date for the CD, as we want to tie it in with a series of concerts.

The Flip Kowlier album “September” spent 9 weeks on the Belgian charts, and reached its highest position at no. 11

Andrew and David Paton are still talking about re-starting their writing and recording collaboration, but Andrew has been busy working on this brass CD, and a series of new choral works, as well as a new work for French Horn and live electronics, and David has been very busy finishing and promoting his latest Pilot CD (Pilot: The Magic Collection), and writing and doing the final edits for his book “Magic - The David Paton Story”, which has just now been released by the publisher Sonicbond.

Andrew has also been back in contact with David Pack, and they too are talking about re-starting their work together…

Finally, Andrew would like to wish all of you a very Happy Christmas, and all the best for 2023.