Beats & Pieces Big Band » beats & pieces

jazzwise cutting edge chart

Ben — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 09:13:58 +0000

Check out the March issue of Jazzwise (with Curios on the cover), where the Beats & Pieces EP is listed in Mike Chadwick’s Cutting Edge Chart on page 12… How exciting!

Remember you can still get your very own copy of the EP via Efpi Records but hurry as the limited edition handmade CDs are fast running out…

manchester evening news ep review

Ben — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 14:29:27 +0000

The new EP received 4/5 stars in a review by Mike Butler in yesterday’s (11th December) Manchester Evening News – great news, cheers Mike! Full review is posted below…

finland

Ben — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 23:32:45 +0000

Anton and I are excited to be off on an Efpi Records ‘business trip’ to Finland on Sunday to visit Sam an do a few gigs, including an Efpi Showcase on Thursday 17th featuring the Hunter/Andreae Quartet and Beats & Pieces Finland – an ensemble featuring some of Helsinki’s finest jazz musicians performing the Beats & Pieces repertoire, including all tracks from the recent EP…

Just checked the weather though, here’s the BBC forecast for next Monday…

Good job I’ve been shopping today!

EP available now!

Ben — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:55:20 +0000

I’m delighted to announce that the debut EP from the Beats & Pieces Big Band is now available to purchase and/or download via the Efpi Records website! You can buy a physical CD as one of a limited edition run of 100 unique handmade packages, or download the EP as high quality MP3s under the ‘honesty box’ model where you choose how much to pay (free if you feel like…). It contains 5 tracks weighing in at just over half an hour’s worth of music, and we’re really proud of it. Tracklisting is as follows:

1. bake

2. yafw (part iii)

3. toan

4. djimi

5. broken

The band features the cream of Manchester’s young improvising talent, many of whom have now moved away to pastures new and are making a mark on jazz scenes in major cities across the continent. The band is as follows:

Ben Cottrell : musical director

Sam Andreae, Kenji Fenton, Sam Healey, Jo McCallum : reeds

Tim Cox, Simon Lodge, Owain Roberts, Paul Strachan : trombones

Owen Bryce, Chris Snead, Graham South, Nick Walters : trumpets

Anton Hunter : guitar

Patrick Hurley : piano, Rhodes

Nick Blacka : bass

Finlay Panter : drums

Hope you enjoy listening to the EP as much as we enjoyed making it!

EP launch aftermath…

Ben — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:31:30 +0000

Thanks a lot to everybody who managed to make it down to our EP launch held at Odder last night, we really enjoyed the gig and it was great to see so many friendly faces! It was also good to speak to lots of people about the band, some of whom had just stumbled across the gig and really enjoyed the music which was brilliant to hear. If you bought an EP then do get in touch and let me know what you think of it!

Photos from the night will be uploaded to the gallery soon…