Featuring Kit Downes (piano), Tom Challenger (tenor saxophone), Lucy Railton (cello) and Sebastian Rochford (drums), Dreamlife of Debris will tour from 19 — 26 October, performing in Letterkenny, Newbridge, Dublin, Tinahely, Portlaoise, Cork, and Dún Laoghaire. Full tour details and tickets available HERE.
Inspired by W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn novel, Kit Downes’ second album, Dreamlife of Debris explores the tangents and threads, subtleties and secrets of the wandering mind. Garnering major attention worldwide, this is an inspired, highly anticipated and critically acclaimed album, already a must-have on the shelves of anyone who is curious about or in love with intelligent, beautiful music. Kit Downes, along with his three co-navigators on this voyage of discovery are all world-class improvising musicians and their in-flight conversation invites us into a world of restless melody, crisp rhythmic jousting, and a luminous palette of sonic colour and texture.
BBC Jazz Award winner, Mercury Music Award nominated and solo recording artist for ECM Records, Kit Downes has toured the world playing piano, church organ and harmonium. He has written commissions for Cheltenham Music Festival, London Contemporary Orchestra, Ensemble Klang at ReWire Festival, the Scottish Ensemble, Cologne Philharmonie and the Wellcome Trust. Kit's playing is highly original and personal, his solo church organ album Obsidian being one of the most remarkable ECM albums of recent years.
Multi-award nominated composer, songwriter, producer and instrumentalist Sebastian Rochford is the celebrated bandleader, drummer and percussionist of Pulled By Magnets. BBC Jazz Award-winner for Best Newcomer in 2004, Seb was also nominated for Best Musician in 2006 and received a Mercury Prize nomination for the self-titled debut album by Basquiat Strings in 2007. He is best known as leader of the post-jazz outfit Polar Bear and co-founder of the punk-jazzers Acoustic Ladyland, as well as being a founder member of Sons of Kemet and a session drummer for many well-known musicians such as Pete Doherty, Adele, Brian Eno and more.
UK based saxophonist, composer, band leader and sideman, Tom Challenger is active in a variety of solo and collaborative projects. Recently his releases (Paxt (2020); Beetle and Bail (2021)) have focussed on solo playing, as well as small group improvisation, as heard in Imasche, a collaboration with Alex Hawkins and Mark Sanders. Tom has long-standing musical friendships, such as his collaborations with Kit Downes, vocalist Lauren Kinsella, and UK/Gambia/Senegal outfit, Fofoulah.
Lucy Railton is a cellist, composer and sound artist based in Berlin and London. Following formal classical training in the UK and the US, she moved her focus towards improvisation, contemporary and electronic music. She has performed and recorded with interdisciplinary artists such as Rebecca Salvadori, Peter Zinovieff, Catherine Lamb, Beatrice Dillon, Kali Malone, Kit Downes and Kadialy Kouyate. Lucy has also collaborated with the writer Laura Grace Ford, choreographers Akram Khan and Sasha Milavic Davies and has contributed to projects highlighting the work of Maryanne Amacher, Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros and Philippe Parreno, to name a few.