Chris Biscoe porta nuovamente in scena le musiche di Mike Westbrook, riviste e adattate per piccolo ensemble strumentale come già nello splendido Music Is (Trio Records, 2022): in scaletta ci sono brani da On Duke’s Birthday, Mama Chicago, L’ascenseur/The Lift, Citadel/Room 315, The Cortège e Goodbye Peter Lorre. Domani a Reading (Regno Unito) al Progress Theatre, con Kate Williams, Mike Outram, Dave Whitford e Eric Ford: Chris Biscoe Plays Mike Westbrook.
Sull'operazione compiuta dal sassofonista, protagonista espertissimo delle sue musiche, osserva Mike: "It has been rare for anyone else to play my tunes. Nowadays jazz musicians tend to write their own material, though many still draw on a common repertoire of well known ‘standards’ borrowed from popular music or bequeathed by great jazzmen of the past. Kate and I must have written well over a hundred original songs and settings of poetry, most of them for theatre shows, jazz cabaret and opera. I have composed numerous instrumentals for bands of all shapes and sizes. Most of these vocal and instrumental compositions were originally conceived as parts within works like Citadel/Room 315 or The Cortège. The fact that they are often written for specific voices or instrumentalists perhaps makes them less interesting to other soloists. Also many use experimental structures, and song-forms where the shape is determined by the lyrics and that does not necessarily appeal to an improvising musician. However, Chris Biscoe has shown that it is possible to take this material out of its original context and make it universal."
https://www.chrisbiscoe.co.uk
https://www.westbrookjazz.co.uk