ACOUSTIC TRIANGLE

HISTORY

Having a love of modern jazz and classical music, I used to dream of playing in a group that would straddle the boundaries between these genres. I also have a passion for un-amplified music and natural sound. So in1995 I formed a trio with pianist John Horler and clarinettist/saxophonist Tony Coe. We performed numerous concerts in Britain and Europe - always without amplification - and recorded an award-winning album (In Concert - ABCD 6) in the wonderful acoustic of St. George's in Bristol.

In 2000, Tim Garland replaced Tony Coe. Tim is undoubtedly one of the finest saxophonists in the world, and I celebrated his arrival by giving the group a name - Acoustic Triangle. Our 2001 album Interactions (ABCD 5012/SABCD 5012) was also recorded at St. George's, and it too picked up some awards and highly favourable reviews.

Two major UK tours later, the marvellous John Horler left us, and we welcomed Welshman Gwilym Simcock on piano. Gwilym, at 22, was already an astonishing pianist and a composer of considerable stature.

Our choice of material continues to reflect our classical backgrounds as well as our careers in the jazz world. We are committed to this unusual blend of European 'classical' music and modern jazz, as well as exploring extended written works and our own brand of collective improvisation. Tim and Gwilym have penned most of the material of late (I do all the organising!). Gwilym's gorgeous In A Wondrous Place was written the day before the recording of the second album, and became a natural choice for the opening track. His Suite, from the same album is a wonderfully accomplished extended work - full of contrasting styles. Gwilym attributes the inspiration for this piece to Acoustic Triangle's Interactions album, and in particular Tim's arrangement of Ravel's exquisite Trois Poèmes de Stephane Mallarmé. Our third album Resonance features some more of Gwilym's fine compositions, including the classically-inspired Ritual and the jumpy Fundero.

Tim Garland is a prolific and diverse composer. He wrote All Change and Beyond The City - The Stars especially for the Catalyst CD. The latter's rondo form borrows from the classical tradition, and it suits us perfectly. We each play an unaccompanied solo in between the written passages; Tim is featured on bass clarinet this time. Spiritual is a salute to the great John Coltrane, and Tim wrote the beautifully elegant Rosa Ballerina for his young daughter. Resonance features Tim's From The Land, which eventually became the basis of the second movement of a piano concerto. He also wrote As The Boy Gathers His Dreams, written for his son Joseph, and Bourdion - a fun and rather quirky French-style dance. We also play material by Kenny Wheeler, Ralph Towner and John Taylor three giants of contemporary jazz, and the occasional standard by Cole Porter or George Gershwin.

Our 2005 Tour Of Sacred Places was a high point in the trio's development. We had always enjoyed playing in churches, so in 2005 we went all-out to play in as many as we could in a real celebration of some of our great buildings. Generous financial help was given by Arts Council England, PRS Foundation and Yamaha, and in the end we were able to visit 28 sacred buildings of various kinds during the year. We are planning many more such concerts and working hard to encourage more music and art generally in such places.

Our three albums are produced very carefully in churches; the sound characteristics they offer seem to suit our music particularly well. We use the best microphones, the best recording equipment and the finest engineers (Bob Whitney, for the latest two). In post-production we use absolutely no electronic reverb. For each recording we placed microphones in the body of the church in order to pick up the natural echo of the building.

There are no musicians I would rather share a stage with than Tim and Gwilym. We pick our concert venues carefully for their fine acoustics and we choose the best pianos - often with Yamaha's help. In the right setting, our drum-less and amp-less approach enables every nuance of our music to be heard fully.

We have received invitations to tour in some far-off lands and we are planning collaborations with larger groups - including a string quartet and a symphony orchestra. We recently had an offer from a film producer to make a film about our music for television.

Malcolm Creese.

Acoustic Triangle
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