Movements In Colour

Established for over 25 years as a successful composer and performer, Andy Sheppard is one of the few British musicians to have made a significant impact on the international jazz scene, playing and writing for settings from solo to big band and chamber orchestra. He’s composed over 350 works that incorporate a strong and characteristic sense of lyricism alongside a very personal use of rhythms from Asia, Africa and South America. Recent years have also seen a growing fascination with new music technologies. He has been described as a serial collaborator, playing, recording and developing new music with artists such as Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, Indian violinist L Shankar, contemporary classical composer/performers John Harle and Joanna MacGregor, late singer songwriter John Martyn and a myriad of leading jazz figures – including the rare hat-trick of three of the seminal composers in contemporary jazz – Carla Bley, George Russell and the late Gil Evans.

On Movements In Colour the British saxophonist heads an extraordinarily gifted international quintet in a set of self-penned pieces, all buoyant and strongly melodic. The music also bears other Sheppard famed characteristics - inventive use of texture and an unerring sense of rhythm which sets the pace for world jazz at its unclassifiable best. Sheppard’s elegant saxophone and the strongly-contrasting guitars of John Parricelli and Eivind Aarset are lifted up by the rhythmic drive of Arild Andersen’s muscular bass and the crisp, dynamic tabla of Kuljit Bhamra, a regular collaborator with Sheppard and a key figure in the Asian pop and bhangra movements.

1. La Tristesse Du Roi - 14:48

2. Bing - 6:02

3. Nave Nave Moe - 12:14

4. Ballarina - 3:44

5. May Song - 6:46

6. We Shall Not Go To Market Today - 8:08

7. International Blue - 5:43