Trish Clowes: Take Five

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Trish grew up surrounded by music and began taking piano lessons at the age of 4, quickly discovering a love for making up her own tunes. Later she took up the clarinet before finding jazz and the saxophone. She particularly took to the piano music of Ravel and Khachaturian, and the songs sang by Ella Fitzgerald.

Trish studied at the Royal Academy of Music on the jazz course from 2003-7 enjoying the tuition and guidance of Iain Ballamy and Pete Churchill. Trish’s interest in composition grew beyond the standard jazz form, experimenting with tango, string quartet music and poem setting. In 2006 she won the Malcolm Williamson Prize for an educational narrative & composition for children and in 2008 she was awarded a Musicians Benevolent Fund Development Award, resulting in the formation of Tangent.

Performances have included the Royal Festival Hall Foyer (London Jazz Festival 2010), Ronnie Scott’s Big Band, Birmingham Symphony Hall Foyer, Vortex Jazz Club, 606 Jazz Club, London Saxophone Festival 2006 and various other UK venues. She has also been commissioned to write “Kailaralia” for by the Tryst Piano Trio at Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2007, “Wintertime” for the Phoenix Singers (December 2008) and “Trapeze” for the Threads Orchestra (2009).

Current projects include her quartet with Chris Montague – which had the honour of Martin France guesting on drums in recent months – and a songs band with Kathleen Willison and Ross Stanley. Trish is currently writing for a special project with string quartet, jazz quartet and Gwilym Simcock as well as collaborating with Luke Styles’s Ensemble Amorpha.

Trish Clowes released her debut album ‘Tangent’ for Basho Records in November 2010, receiving praise for it’s integrity, luminousity and ambition. The album features her sextet of the same name, as well as Gwilym Simcock and Kathleen Willison. Two of the tracks also feature an orchestra conducted by Jules Buckley. In the Autumn of 2010 Trish toured the UK with her band, generously supported by Jazz Services. Following the success of ‘Tangent’, Trish was recently selected by Jamie Cullum, Gilles Peterson and Jez Nelson to perform on the BBC Introducing stage at Cheltenham Jazz Festival 2011.