The Current Line-Up is: **************************
JONATHAN COHEN (PIANO, KEYBOARDS, FLUTE, VOCALS) has worked as a composer/musician for numerous jazz and world music ensembles (and leads 'Time Loves Changes' the main vehicle for his original compositions, as well as the piano/vocal trio 'Bright Moments' & the piano/cello/doublebass chamber trio 'Plate Tectoniques'), for theatre companies, and recorded musical settings of poetry and for the visual arts. He has recent commissions from The Little Venice Music and Literary Festival, and the Royal Opera House, (he wrote the libretto for an Aria for “A NITRO at the Opera”). He has performed music with musicians and singers in India, Cuba, USA and Kazakhstan, as well as working on community projects both in the UK and abroad. He has pioneered Music Therapy services in the NHS, Education, Social Services and in the charitable sector. He wrote the play “The Compartment” produced and broadcast on BBC1 Television. **************************
British Jazz Awards winner ALEC DANKWORTH (DOUBLE BASS) has worked with artists as diverse as Stephane Grappelli, Abdullah Ibrahim and Van Morrison. After studying at Berklee College of Music, Alec became a member of various groups, notably Clark Tracey, Julian Joseph and Nigel Kennedy. During a period of residency in New York he played with the Duke Ellington Orchestra and joined the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Alec has since rejoined his parents' group (John Dankworth and Cleo Laine) and leads the Alec Dankworth Trio. His recent recordings have been with the Dave Brubeck Quartet. **************************
PAUL CLARVIS (DRUMS, WORLD PERCUSSION, TABLAS, DHARBOUKAH) achieved notoriety at the 1995 BBC Last Night of the Proms as the drum soloist in Birtwistle’s ‘Panic’, and has played with musicians as diverse as Leonard Bernstein and John Dankworth. He won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, continues to study traditional drumming from around the world and was recently chairman of the judges for BBC Young Musician of the Year. He has recorded with Paul McCartney, Elton John, Richard Thompson, John Adams, Andy Sheppard, Elvis Costello, Mark Anthony Turnage, Michel Legrand, Gordon Beck, Michael Nyman, John Harle and Bryan Ferry. Paul is a professor at The Royal Academy of Music and, with Sonia Slany, runs Village Life Records. **************************
SHANTI PAUL JAYASINHA (TRUMPET, FLUGELHORN) leads his own group Shanti Jazz World, as well as playing in the Alex Wilson band, Monica Vasconcelos’s ‘Nois’, and the ‘Zappatistas’. Whilst studying at the Guildhall he was featured soloist with Kenny Wheeler on the CD 'Walk Softly'. Since then he has played with many leading bands including Snowboy and the Latin Section, Roberto Pla, Stewart Curtis Klezmer Groove (CD 'Too Loud for Dinner'), Mike Westbrook Orchestra, London Jazz Orchestra, District 6, Tom Bancroft Orchestra, Grand Union Orchestra and Brian Priestley's Jazztet. He has recorded with Lindsay Cooper's Sahara Dust, the Brand New Heavies, Nina Moreta, Louis Phillips, Jaguar and on the soundtrack of Derek Jarman's 'The Garden'. **************************
RICHARD BOLTON (GUITARS, CELLO) combines the rare qualities of mastery of both guitar and cello, as band-leader and collaborator. As a blues, world-music and jazz guitarist Richard performs with artists such as Rolf Harris, left-field bluesman Billy Jenkins, Willard White (in his Paul Robeson tribute concerts), and film-composer Zbigniew Preissner. Richard played cello in Mike Westbrook’s jazz-opera ‘Quichotte’, in Huw Warren’s Barrel Organ Band and on June Tabor’s CDs ‘A Quiet Eye’ and ‘Rosa Mundi’, as well as on Helen Roche’s 2004 CD of Irish love songs, ‘Shake The Blossom Early’. **************************
ROBERT TOWNSEND (SOP/ALTO/TENOR SAXOPHONES, FLUTE, CLARINET) has played throughout the world with a wide range of musicians including a tour of South America with guitarist Steve Hackett and several European jazz festivals with Django Bates' Delightful Precipice. He can be heard live and on CD with regular bands 'The Hungry Ants' and Mark Lockheart's 'Scratch Band'. He has recorded for film, TV and radio as well as performing and recording for contemporary dance groups such as Phoenix Dance Co and Siobhan Davies Dance Co. He is a lecturer in jazz at Middlesex University. He comes to Little Gidding straight from a tour with Herbie Hancock collaborator, trumpeter Eddie Henderson.
Influences
Each other, Django Bates, Mike & Kate Westbrook, Roland Perrin, John Law, Miles Davis, Keith Jarrett, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Joni Mitchell, Robert Newman, Stephen Poliakoff, JS Bach, Maurice Ravel, Jazz on BBC Radio 3
Sounds Like
"....a sort of prayerful jazz
equivalent of Fauré"........ ".......no doubting
the zest and good spirits of this
sizzling and unusual concert" ...... "compelling.....mesmerising" Roderic Dunnett, The Church Times June 07
STUDIO CD 'Little Gidding - A Place In and Out of Time' by the TIME LOVES CHANGES 6tet featuring Alec Dankworth & Paul Clarvis, available 18th July 2008, contact freehjc11@hotmail.com for copies!
Record Label
TLC001 STUDIO CD TIME LOVES CHANGES 6tet LGaPIaOoT
STUDIO CD RECORDING NOW AVAILABLE! Contact freehjc11@hotmail.com
TIME LOVES CHANGES is the main artistic vehicle for JONATHAN COHEN's Original Compositions, and was formed in 2004. The band sprung into action in Sextet form in 2007 as Jonathan was commissioned to compose a major long-form work in thirteen movements interspersed with a reading of T.S. Eliot's poem "Little Gidding" for the 2007 T.S. ELIOT LITERARY FESTIVAL.
Musicians who have played in the group on various projects include JONATHAN COHEN, ALEC DANKWORTH, PAUL CLARVIS, SHANTI PAUL JAYASINHA, ROB TOWNSEND, RICHARD BOLTON, Julie Walkington, Luke Annersley, Barnaby Green, Carlos Lopez-Real.
JONATHAN COHEN, Composer, Musician and State Registered Music Therapist, has composed an ambitious site specific original work which was premiered as the centrepiece of the May 2007 T.S. Eliot Festival, celebrating the anniversary of Eliot’s pilgrimage to Little Gidding in the 1930’s which inspired Eliot to write one of his most famous poems, “Little Gidding”, the final poem of the “Four Quartets.” A reading of the poem between each of the thirteen movements was performed by Malcolm Guite, Chaplain of Girton College Cambridge during the concert. (The commission for musical composition and performance came from the ‘Friends of Little Gidding’ who received a grant from the ‘Old Possums Practical Trust’).
Little Gidding has been a place of spiritual community and pilgrimage since the seventeenth century when the first religious community based on simple living was founded by Nicholas Ferrar.
Jonathan’s piece takes inspiration from this special place, and from Eliot’s poetry.
Music for Head, Heart and Feet.
Performed by leading names in contemporary jazz and world music, the piece takes the listener on a journey through jazz, classical and world music and was first performed in the auspicious atmosphere of Steeple Gidding Church in this special place of spiritual and literary history, to celebrate the timelessness and contemporary relevance of Little Gidding and Eliot’s poem.
"....A SORT OF PRAYERFUL JAZZ EQUIVALENT OF FAURE".....".....NO DOUBTING THE ZEST AND GOOD SPIRITS OF THIS SIZZLING AND UNUSUAL CONCERT" RODERIC DUNNETT, THE CHURCH TIMES June 2007.
The piece has since been performed by the Time Loves Changes Sextet in Chelsea and Highgate, London, with a solo performance of the work in Bloomsbury.
Jonathan has recently received a commission for an entirely new lyrical composition to be performed in Chelsea in 2009 by an augmented Time Loves Changes Sextet with the addition of singers and in collaboration with the visual narratives of photographer and designer Caroline Stone.
It's the way you play that makes it . . . Play like you play. Play like you think, and then you got it, if you're going to get it. And whatever you get, that's you, so that's your story. -- Count Basie
You're not going to believe this but I've been chosen as a finalist for the International Songwriting Competition! There were 15,000 applicants from around the world!
I'm also up for the Peoples Choice Awards which is run by the International Songwriting Competition.
Congratulations on the T.S. Eliot piece. Lovely work. Only sorry I couldn't stay for the whole performance of it the other night. Living in Suburbia and having a bit too much to do at the moment is to blame. Hope to catch the rest of the piece another time. All good wishes Roshi xx
inspired a new musical work, which received its première in neighbouring Steeple Gidding Church as part of the weekend Eliot Festival. The new work, Little Gidding: A place in and out of time, by the composer, music therapist, and jazz musician Jonathan Cohen, is a reflection in 13 movements on Eliot’s poem. Interspersed with a mesmerising, charged reading of “Little Gidding” by Malcolm Guite, Chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge, the work’s dazzlingly contrasted sections were performed by the Time Love Changes jazz sextetIt was originally hoped that Cohen might compose a vocal setting of Eliot’s words; for various reasons of copyright, this was prevented. No matter, it was the astonishing versatility of all six players which gave Cohen’s music its compelling magnetism. Some movements seemed more successful purely as energised jazz in its own right; others teetered on the edge of not so much illumining as adding piquancy to Eliot’s often elusive text... there was an almost Elizabethan feel to lilting guitar and drums (“Ash on an old man’s sleeve”), while instinctively rehearsed, forceful tutti (“flood and drought”), plus dark saxophone and strummed double bass, following the long Part II of the poem (“... and faded like the blowing of a horn”), produced a sort of prayerful jazz equivalent of Fauré. What really caught the imagination was an Indian-sounding “tabla” solo from the drummer Paul Clarvis, beautifully faded out with a final soft glissando (“See, now they vanish, the faces and places . . .”). Robert Townsend’s vibrant alto saxophone solo near the close was a model of jazz display... there was no doubting the zest and good spirits of this sizzling and unusual concert. The final movement, in which all the instrumentalists gently hummed and susurrated, was a treat... members of the audience obviously enjoyed the evening enormously. Roderic Dunnett CHURCH TIMES 8.June 2007
