Beats & Pieces: The Open Fund for Organisations
Composition and development of new music for Beats & Pieces
Led by composer and conductor Ben Cottrell, Beats & Pieces Big Band see themselves as a band that happens to be big, rather than your average ‘big band’. First playing together as Beats & Pieces in 2008, today these fourteen musicians know each other inside out socially and musically, and this familiarity is part of what sets them aside from a lot of other big bands today.
The music is an expression of the band’s members and their varied musical backgrounds and activities, all brought together in Ben Cottrell’s inspired writing. His compositions reflect the diversity of music that people of their generation have grown up surrounded by, and as such are influenced as much by Michael Jackson, Björk or Radiohead as they are Duke Ellington, Gil Evans or Loose Tubes.
The band have released two albums, Big Ideas (2012) and All In (2015), and have performed across the UK and Europe to consistent audience and critical acclaim. Support from PRS for Music Foundation in Autumn 2015 gives bandleader Ben Cottrell the opportunity to devote time solely to composing for a third album, and puts the band in a position to pay its musicians a small fee for their time rehearsing the new music – neither of which have been possible to date. It is anticipated that the resulting album will be released in late 2016, and the band aim to perform the music live to audiences as far and wide as they are able to!
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