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MUSICIANS
DJANGO BATES
| Django Bates was born (1960) in Beckenham, Kent in a street
Ofull of bank managers'. His parents grew cabbages in the front garden
and filled the house with vagrant friends and their families "I don't
think we fitted" he concludes. Django credits the delight he takes
in his music to the variety of musical influence from his childhood; his
father being a collector of Romanian folk, African music and Jazz. After
various lessons on piano, violin and trumpet, Django found himself at the
Royal College of music in London studying composition. Two weeks later,
he left realising he wanted to remain a self-taught composer.
Django performs world-wide with his quartet Human Chain and nineteen piece musical juggernaut Delightful Precipice. He collaborates with a diverse range of artists from the classical, jazz, Indian and pop worlds. He recently composed My Dream Kitchen for Evelyn Glennie, Fine Frenzy for the Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company and a piano concerto What it's like to be alive for Joanna MacGregor and the RLPO. Future projects include his own circus project Circus Umbilicus and a keyboard concerto for the millennium 2000 years beyond UNDO premiered at the London's Barbican Hall 29th February 2000. In 1997 he won The Danish Jazzpar prize, dubbed the Nobel prize of Jazz. The fruit of which is quiet nights (Screwgun 70007) his sixth album in five years. "It's more mellow than usual" says the madcap keyboardist and Eb horn player. It features the beguiling voice of young Swedish singer Josefine Cronholm together with the subtle textures of an exotic canvas and ambient electronica in the presentation of well-known pieces like "Speak Low", "Over the Rainbow" and Duke Ellington's "Solitude". In July 2002 Django will be the conductor and composer for the European Jazz Youth Orchestra which will be touring throughout Europe & Scandinavia with nineteen musicians selected from nineteen countries. He also has a world premier of a new piece for the National Orchestra of Wales. This will performed & broadcast Live on BBC Radio 3 on the 17th May 2002 in Cardiff and the 18th May 2002 in Cheltenham. For more information about the surreal world of Django Bates and The Lost Marble Department please visit www.djangobates.co.uk DISCOGRAPHY 1. quiet nights (Screwgun 70007)
October 2001 Biography courtesy of:
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