UpRoot Alexander Hawkins, Elaine Mitchener Quartet, Niel Charles & Stephen Davis

• 1 Why Is Love Such a Funny Thing? 02:16
• 2 The Miracle / You 07:04
• 3 UpRoot 08:56
• 4 If You Say So 04:43
• 5 Blasé 02:48
• 6 OM-SE / Environment Music 13:23
• 7 Joy 03:57
• 8 Directives / Walk Nicely / I'll Meet You There 06:10
• Total Runtime 49:17

Info for UpRoot

This quartet represents the collaboration of two of the most distinctive voices of their generation, and stakes out a remarkable common ground from the pair’s vast range of influences and experience. The repertoire fuses Elaine Mitchener’s unique way with both melody and abstraction, with Alexander Hawkins’ idiosyncratic compositional and pianistic world; as well as spotlighting reimaginings of a small number of beautiful Jazz tunes which reveal the influence of precursors such as Jeanne Lee and Archie Shepp. Structurally, the group with Neil Charles on bass and Stephen Davis on drums function as complete equals, veering radically from the traditional norm of ‘singer plus rhythm section’, instead treating this as only one possible dynamic amongst many.

Brian Morton writes in the liner notes: „This is music that speaks directly to our condition, our uprootedness and our strange fixities of purpose alike. It is clever and emotional. It comes out of jazz, and a whole lot else besides. Mathematicians have mostly done their great work by the age of 30. Musicians often continue to mature for decades. Here is a group, populated by some of our most singular and precious talents, whose greatest talent is to communicate, and whose music already bearthe signs of maturity and longevity.

"remarkable reinventions by two fearless originals" (The Guardian)

"as stunning as it was fresh" (FT.com)

"The brilliance and urgency, the openness and the irresistible inner swing of the movement captivated the audience...the group took the audience as its fifth member on a stunning many-sided sonic tour...the musical action went beyond known limits" (AllAboutJazz)

Neil Charles, double bass
Stephen Davis, drums, percussion
Alexander Hawkins, piano
Elaine Mitchener, vocals

Recorded April 19, 20, 2017, at Fish Factory Studios, London, by Benedic Lamdin
Mixed by Benedic Lamdin. Mastered by Alex Bonney
Produced by Alexander Hawkins/Elaine Mitchener, Intakt Records, Patrik Landolt

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Alexander Hawkins
is a composer, pianist, organist, and bandleader who is ‘unlike anything else in modern creative music’ (Ni Kantu) and whose recent work has reached a ‘dazzling new apex’ (Downbeat). A largely self-taught improviser, he works in a vast array of creative contexts. His own highly distinctive soundworld is forged through the search to reconcile both his love of free improvisation and profound fascination with composition and structure.

His writing has been said to represent ‘a fundamental reassertion of composition within improvised music’ (Point of Departure), and his voice one of the ‘most vividly distinctive...in modern jazz’ (The Jazzmann).

As a pianist, he has been described as ‘remarkable...possessing staggering technical ability and a fecund imagination as both player and composer.’ Concerning his organ playing, critic Brian Morton recently commented that ‘[t]he most interesting Hammond player of the last decade and more, [Hawkins] has already extended what can be done on the instrument.’

An in-demand sideman, Hawkins continues to be heard live and on record with vast array of contemporary leaders of all generations, including the likes of Evan Parker, John Surman, Joe McPhee, Mulatu Astatke, Wadada Leo Smith, Anthony Braxton, Marshall Allen, Han Bennink, Hamid Drake, Rob Mazurek, Taylor Ho Bynum, Harris Eisenstadt, Matana Roberts, and Shabaka Hutchings, amongst many others. He has also been noted for a number of years for his performances in the bands of legendary South African drummer, Louis Moholo-Moholo.

In 2012, he was chosen as a member of the first edition of the London Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Soundhub’ scheme for young composers. He also received a major BBC commission in late 2012 for a fifty minute composition: One Tree Found was first performed and broadcast in March 2013, and was subsequently performed and broadcast for the WDR in Cologne (2014). He has also twice been commissioned by the London Jazz Festival (once as composer, once as an arranger), and by the Cheltenham Jazz Festival (2016). He was named 'Instrumentalist of the Year' in the 2016 Parliamentary Jazz Awards.

Concert appearances have taken him to major club, concert and festival stages worldwide.

Elaine Mitchener
is a classically trained singer whose musical experience covers gospel, jazz and free-improvisation and contemporary new music. She has performed/ recorded with the London Improvisers Orchestra, Henry Grimes, Christian Marclay, David Toop, Steve Beresford, Phil Minton, Max Eastley and Maggie Nicholls. Music theatre productions include Muziektheater Transparant’s “Century Songs” project directed by Wouter Van Looy and David Moss, the role of Euphrosine for David Toop’s opera “Star-Shaped Biscuit” at the Aldeburgh Festival and “OF LEONARDO DA VINCI…” (a collaboration with David Toop and filmmaker Barry Lewis) in Venice 2010. In March 2012 she will perform the THREE HORATIAN SONGS by Heiner Goebbels conducted by Diego Masson.

This album contains no booklet.