Piano trio composing, music of Pat Metheny, reggae and Mahler

Over the last few weeks I've been playing around with writing a fair bit of music - the biggest piece so far has been a composition for my 17-piece big band, the MO Jazz Orchestra, to play. I've just about got that finished and we're hoping to gig it soon. On another note, tomorrow (30th April) we're playing at the Vortex jazz club doing a concert of Pat Metheny big band pieces - should be fun!

Other compositions have been for piano trio format, and my trio Cygnus Flare have been playing some of them so far. I'm also looking forward to debut'ing some of these new compositions next Saturday 6th May at the Junction jazz bar in Brixton with a trio consisting of myself on drums and featuring a couple of great players from the London scene - John Turville on piano and Calum Gourlay on bass. I'm really looking forward to hearing the tunes get transformed from sheet music to real live music! We're on from 8pm.

The Amati Orchestra have started rehearsals for Mahler's 1st symphony and Rachmaninov's 2nd piano concerto and I'm excited to play timpani on these. Mahler's symphonies in particular are pretty crazy, so I've invested a fair bit of time in working through the score and writing in cues.. It's nice to know what's going on even if there are sections of rests on the timpani part, the music is amazing and I enjoy studying it. My reggae band, Big Bang Roots (in the picture) did a recording last week which was a nice and welcome break from complicated music - happy reggae tunes!

Other than that I've just been doing the odd jazz gigs, jams and rehearsals, and went to the Ronnie Scotts jam session to catch up with folks there as haven't been for a while.. Mark Fletcher was on drums, always a nice surprise!