Friday 7th February 2025
Tenor Madness - Preludes & Grooves: Bach reimagined!
The visionary jazz trio Tenor Madness take a fresh approach to the magnificent music of Johann Sebastian Bach and two of his family members. Themes from vocal and instrumental works are taken on a daring musical journey of improvisation and transformation:
“As contemporary musicians who love the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, we discussed how best to bring this great composer’s music alive using the musical language of today - and this is what we came up with! Dipping into the great man’s catalogue of preludes and fugues, concertos and motets, we’ve taken them as the starting point for present-day improvisations and compositions of our own, rooted in the sounds of everything from jazz and funk through to Americana and Brazilian choro”.
Tenor Madness is a piano trio project that takes Renaissance and Baroque themes and improvises on them in the modern idiom. Their highly praised collaborative projects with choirs and other instrumentalists have brought fresh light to works by composers including Gesualdo, Salamone Rossi, Purcell, Byrd, and JS and JC Bach. Tenor Madness have broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and performed at the Aldeburgh Festival, the Cambridge Jazz Festival and the EFG London Jazz Festival, and they have just returned from the Valletta Baroque Festival in Malta.
Line up:
David Gordon - piano
Sandy Burnett - double bass
Tom Hooper – drums
Harpsichordist, jazz pianist and composer David Gordon trained as a mathematician at Bristol University before turning to music full-time, and he has since toured all over the world. He appears on countless CDs as composer, leader and sideman. David has written four concertos, the most recent - entitled Earthcycle - is itself a sequence of four mini-violin-concertos, written as companion pieces to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
Sandy Burnett enjoys a wide-ranging career that combines broadcasting, performing and lecturing. After a decade spent as presenter on BBC Radio 3, he was appointed the Academy of Ancient Music’s Hogwood Fellow. He has directed all of Bach’s sacred cantatas and is a first-call double bass player. During lockdown he established an online classical music appreciation Listening Club and is an accredited Art Society lecturer.
Tom Hooper began playing drums on the sofa with chop sticks at about six years old. He began playing professionally at age 14, performing with local bands and summer season theatre pit work in Cornwall; later he gained a jazz performance degree from London’s Royal Academy of Music. Tom’s extensive performing and recording credits include Steve Harley, Grace Jones, Simple Minds, Sir John Dankworth OBE, Wynton Marsalis, Omar, and Ben Earle.
www.sandyburnett.com/tenormadness
Tenor Madness - Preludia i rytmy: Bach w nowej odsłonie!
Wizjonerskie trio jazzowe Tenor Madness prezentuje świeże podejście do wspaniałej muzyki Johanna Sebastiana Bacha i dwóch innych członków jego rodziny. Tematy utworów wokalnych i instrumentalnych zabierane są w śmiałą muzyczną podróż pełną improwizacji i transformacji:
„Jako współcześni muzycy, którzy kochają dzieła Johanna Sebastiana Bacha, zastanawialiśmy się, jak najlepiej ożywić muzykę tego wielkiego kompozytora za pomocą dzisiejszego języka muzycznego – i oto, co wymyśliliśmy! Zagłębiając się w katalog preludiów i fug, koncertów i motetów tego wielkiego człowieka, przyjęliśmy je jako punkt wyjścia dla współczesnych improwizacji i własnych kompozycji, zakorzenionych w brzmieniach wszystkiego, od jazzu i funku po muzykę amerykańską i brazylijskie choro”.
Muzycy:
David Gordon – fortepian
Sandy Burnett – kontrabas
Tom Hooper – perkusja
