Huw Warren - A Potted Biography

Pianist and composer Huw Warren never ceases to amaze as an intriguing and thrilling musician and composer. The winner of this years highly coveted BBC Jazz Award for Innovation, Huw has established an international presence in recent years, as a musical director/pianist for contemporary folk diva June Tabor for well over a decade (they recently appeared to a full house at the Berlin Jazz Festival), and for his ongoing work with ex-Austrian Musican of the Year bassist Peter Herbert and NY violin virtuosio improviser Mark Feldman. He has been broadcast extensively live on BBC's Jazz on 3 with Herbert and Feldman as well as in an ongoing duo project with guitarist John Parricelli. This is as well as being a co-leader of jazz quartet Perfect Houseplants, a recent live duo collaboration with international pianist Joanna McGregor and an ambitious writing commission for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and choir in October 2004. Huw has been short listed for the 2006 Arts Foundation fellowship in Jazz Composition. He has also played regularly with Kenny Wheeler, Billy Jenkins and The Fun Horns (with 2 CDs on Babel) and vocalist Christine Tobin.

Huw's passionate versatile approach to music knows no bounds. He hasrecently completed a project ,God Only Knows,(Duw a Wyr) with Welsh songstress Lleuwen Steffen exploring Hymns of the 1904-5 Welsh revival, along with saxophonist Mark Lockheart . Early in 2005 Huw appeared with Lleuwen on a Welsh Songs of Praise. Huw appeared last year on Radio 3's In Tune presenting versions of songs from his most recent CD Hundreds of Things a Boy Can Make, featuring his compositions' intriguing collage-like form of which NY violinist Mark Feldman's passionate virtuosity is a compelling feature. Huw's compositions build a uniquely unadulterated interface between jazz improvisation, twentieth century classical and folk music.

Huw has made his name over the past decade as one of the most sensitive and aware musicians, easily able to straddle all musical styles. His first CD in his own name, Barrel Organ (Far From Home), was based on 1930s photos of urban and rural life, and a second Babel highly acclaimed best seller for solo piano, Infinite Riches in a Little Room, based on heroes as diverse as Elizabethan composer John Dowland, Brazilian maverick Hermeto Pascoal and bebop supremo Charlie Parker, came out in June 2001. Huw continues to prove himself a richly melodic, unpredictably minimalist and infectiously rhythmic composer besides being a thrillingly lyrical improviser whose highly unique pan-diversity is regarded highly across the often exclusive worlds of jazz, classical, and folk.

Huw has completed several commissions including Riot (for Piano Circus), Steamboat Bill Jnr (a new score for the classic Buster Keaton movie), New Folk Songs (for Perfect Houseplants and Pamela Thorby), Lullaby Exit Bear (for the RSC) music for a new production of Jean Cocteau's Monologues at the Lyric theatre in London, as well as a major new multimedia work for children's choir and chamber ensemble "Railway Mania".This was first performed by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and East Ayrshire youth Choir in November 2004. He has also written recently for the ABRSM jazz syllabus, Tango Siempre, Ensemble Plus, The Koch Ensemble, The Palladian Ensemble, The Renga Ensemble, the Gwynedd and Mon Youth Jazz Band, and has co-written a reconstruction Mass with Perfect Houseplants and The Orlando Consort (Extempore 2). Works in progress for 2006 include 'This is Now!(Nawr!) funded by an Arts Council of Wales Creative Wales Award , a Double Violin Concerto for the Welsh Chamber Orchestra and a new project with saxophonist Iain Ballamy to be performed at Cheltenham jazz festival .

His next release on Babel will be a set of Piano/Bass improvisations with
Peter Herbert, Everything We Love, and more in Feb 2006.