Bill Laurance doesn't do boundaries. The London-born pianist and composer has spent his career exploring every corner of the creative spectrum. His recorded output ranges from solo piano albums (Lumen, 2025) to intimate duo work (Keeping Company, 2023) and trio recordings (Live at Ronnie Scott's, 2020), through to large-scale collaborations with the WDR Big Band (Live at the Philharmonie Cologne, 2019) and The Untold Orchestra (Bloom, 2024), not to mention numerous albums with the Grammy-winning US collective Snarky Puppy.
Looking back to when he studied music at the University of Leeds, are their particular composers whose approach to orchestration left a lasting mark on his own compositional voice?
“The record I always come back to is Sunlight by Herbie Hancock. It was the first time I'd heard that combination of improvisation with an orchestra. To me it was really exciting. I studied classical music at university and majored in composition. I was lucky enough to conduct an orchestra there and that was a huge eye opener in terms of how orchestration works – having to get the score out of the players in a classical context was a huge stepping stone for me. Ravel was a big influence early on, and E. J. Moeran’s Sinfonietta in terms of the way in which an orchestra can colour things, different rhythms, different harmonies.
“I'm classically trained but I've ended up under this jazz umbrella – I'm constantly searching for the opportunities to bridge the gap between those two worlds. Gil Evans, those arrangements for sure, and then Quincy’s Sinatra stuff I grew up on, the way a band can swing. And then Steve Reich, that's where a lot of my Bloom
record came from where I was using the orchestra as a rhythm section. I remember Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring having a very stirring effect on me.”
The mention of Stravinsky’s revolutionary ballet score provides a useful reminder that Laurance’s extensive engagement with the dance world includes work with Alvin Ailey, Ballet Rambert, Matthew Bourne's Adventures in Motion Pictures, Phoenix Dance, Northern Ballet Theatre and English National Ballet.
Laurance’s origin story – meeting Michael League at a pick-up gig in Leeds and being invited to the US to record Snarky Puppy’s debut album The Only Constant – is a beautiful example of serendipity. Was there something specific about that initial collaboration with League that felt creatively aligned?
“I think the timing was hugely significant to start with. I was ready to leave Leeds and explore. I really wanted to go to the States, and I met Michael, and he was just this beacon of enthusiasm and inclusivity, and we just got on so well. He's one of my best friends and I love him to pieces – we never run out of things to talk about, and we’ve evolved together as musicians and as friends. Meeting him just felt like a right time, right place thing, and he gave me the opportunity to spread my wings and grow. He produced my first work with Flint and he was a visionary in terms of realising my ideas. I think we're both looking for similar things creatively in terms of the diversity and what it is we're exploring. We're both interested in world music, and that's what the duo is about.”
When a new piece starts to take shape, is it a melodic fragment, a rhythmic idea, a chord voicing, or something else entirely that provides the initial spark?
“I think to me the goal of the artist is to be a conduit of the human experience, and that is about being open to every single influence. I see the piano very much as a member of the percussion family. I love to drum, I used to have drum lessons. I’ve put a drum kit in my studio now and I play with my son. I’ve given him a keyboard and I've finally got someone to play drums with. We've set up a little parent band at my son's school as well called Parental Guidance. I'm playing the drums in that. I feel like rhythm is where everything begins for me – the pulse is the foundation. From there, melody and harmony is a kind of bonus. So rhythm is a big part of the initial idea. An idea could come at the piano, an idea could come walking and I whistle a melody into my phone, or listening to the rhythm of the train that I'm on, all of these things.”
When performing a solo set, how much is planned out ahead of time, and how much is pure improvisation in the moment?
“What I'm trying to do is commit to total freedom at the instrument. The more I do it, the more I feel like that's where the truth of what I'm doing is. I like the vulnerability and the fragility of not knowing, and also the kind of courage that Herbie Hancock often talks about – to step into a space and step into the unknown without having any kind of real sense of where you might go or where you might end up. That really does take courage in the context of a concert where people have come to hear you play. It also feels counterintuitive to an album that I've made where I spent months composing these pieces, and now I'm just throwing them all out the window and just making it up on the spot.
“Most shows have a combination of both – if it's a two-set show, I tend to do one set completely wide-open improvisation, and then a second set of fixed repertoire. Within that repertoire there's still a lot of improvisation, but there's more clear melodic content there. Especially solo, I feel like it presents a unique opportunity to dive into the element of freedom. I'm trying to let the music tell me what to play, rather than the other way around. Something about being by yourself on stage compels me to want to bring the audience with me, and that sense of improvising is a way to do that – we all feel like we're listening, we're hearing it for the very first time, and we're on that journey together. I'm trying to immerse myself into that more and more. Keith Jarrett is in many ways my North Star, in that sense of total freedom in the instrument and always trying to come back to that present moment. Not thinking about the past or the future but just embracing every note as it comes.”
As Artist in Residence at Morley College and an educator globally, Laurance is now guiding the next generation. Does he find that his students push him towards new ideas or different ways of thinking about composition and performance?
“Absolutely. Part of the reason I'm so passionate about education is because it's where everything begins for me. I often say everything starts with inspiration, and I was so lucky to have such amazing teachers as a youngster myself. That's absolutely where any kind of reason to want to play begins for me. I feel partly indebted to pass that on in any way I can. And in addition to that, to have to articulate the reasons why you do the things you do creatively – I find when I'm teaching anyone, I'm teaching myself again. I think fundamentally it's all about the evolution of what it is that we're exploring. I'm often amazed at the way in which an idea I present will then generate a whole host of new ideas that haven't occurred to me. It feels like such a fundamental part of keeping the fire alive somehow. I'm astonished as well, by the degree to which students speed up in their capacity to take in information.
As he prepares for the Music Network tour, will the set list centre primarily on Lumen (his most recent solo album), or is he planning to dip into his back catalogue too?
“There’s a little sprinkling of songs from other albums as well. The solo piano arrangements of songs from Cables are in there too. And then a couple of things that are on the new duo album. But in the solo context, it’s the open improv that’s the defining factor. Freedom and improvisation is always front and centre.”
And might he also perform ‘Lumen’, the album’s title track, with its shimmering, cascading melodic lines?
“For sure, I always play that one. That will definitely be in there.”
