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Folk Bands and Artists

Fred Thomas´ Polyphonic Jazz Band

London

http://fred-thomas.co.uk/polyphonic-jazz-band

Fred Thomas’ Polyphonic Jazz Band explores improvised counterpoint in an uncompromising way through the medium of jazz standards. Eschewing the traditional chordal roles of harmonic instruments such as the piano and guitar, this ensemble instead seeks inspiration and transplants structural ideas from one of the richest resources in all of Western music history: Baroque Polyphony. Borrowing these surprisingly under-explored contrapuntal schemes and applying them to jazz music’s most cherished and often hackneyed songs has enabled Fred Thomas to research a very new way of interpreting this repertoire without written arrangements. This distinctive soundworld – cool, complex and beguiling, yet stylistically very open – results from the cumulative effect of diverse musical personalities weaving together simultaneous independent melodies and celebrating the liquid intricacy of a texture that derives from music two hundred years older than the birth of jazz. Along side band-leader Fred Thomas, Martin Speake (Paul Motian, Bobo Stenson), Mick Foster (Cleo Laine, LPO) and Phil Stevenson (Fofoulah, Iness Mezel) all bring their own voices to a genuinely new way of playing the old songs that still nourish our jazz culture.

“Fred Thomas is brilliant” – BBC Music Magazine

“Splendidly creative” – The Wire Magazine

“A beautiful thing” – Guy Garvey, BBC Radio 6

“Thomas is challenging the status quo” – The Creators Project

“High class” – The Telegraph

“A first-class double-bass/pianist” – Charlie Gillett

“Highly original” – Chris Parker

“Fred Thomas emerges as the leading voice” – OMH Music

“Fred Thomas provided an inexhaustible range of touch and colour” – Birmingham Post

“Not to be missed” – Benoît Delbecq

“A creative artist blessed with an abundance of imagination” – Hexagone

“In a word: sublime” – SilenceAndSound