News

November 4, 2019 Andrew has worked on a new album by a Belgian artist called Geike, whom he describes as one of the most exciting solo talents he’s worked with for years. Unusually, he recorded all of his orchestral arrangements on high quality samples at this home studio, aided as always by his wife Kirsten, who engineered the sessions and also played some of the parts. The parts were still all written out in conventional scores before the recordings commenced. The album was released on October 18th by Sony Belgium, and is called “Lost in Time”.

Another exciting development is the use of two tracks from the CD Andrew made some 20 years ago with John Wallace called “Stockhausen - Michael’s Farewell.” Two pieces from the album have been picked up by Hollywood for the new film called “Bolden”, directed by Dan Pritzker, and starring Gary Carr, Erik LeRay Harvey, Ian McShane and Michael Rooker. The film tells the story of the jazz trumpeter Buddy Bolden, who many think invented jazz - he was Louis Armstrong’s hero. They have used extracts from two works off the CD in the film - firstly from the piece by Andrew’s friend Tim Souster called “The Transistor Radio of Saint Narcissus”, and secondly from Andrew’s own composition “Plasmogeny II”. Most of the music was written by Winton Marsalis. .

Andrew has been working on several new pieces of concert music, two of them since the beginning of last year. One is a work for two trumpets and piano, which he is writing for his old friends John Wallace and John Miller: this has taken a long time, but should be finished in a month or two. He has also been working on a commission from Ty Cerdd, the Welsh national organisation for the promotion of Welsh music - this is a work for double brass quintet called “Ritual”. It was written in honour of Andrew’s uncle Trevor King, who was a flight engineer in Bomber Command during the 2nd World War, and who died over Berlin in January 1944. It uses the whole space of the concert hall - players move about in the room for some of the work; although for most of it they are seated in a conventional semi-circle. The piece will receive its première next month (14th November) in St. Andrews, Scotland at the “Fringe of Gold” festival performed by the Wallace Collection and Stockholm Chamber Brass. The next scheduled performances are in New York and Cardiff - details to follow.

Andrew has been back in touch wth David Paton, and will be spending some time with him next month in Scotland: maybe a co-write or two will result??