Tickets £8, Doors 7pm, Performance 8pm

Denys Baptiste Quartet

Denys Baptiste - tenor/soprano saxes

Andrew McCormack – piano

Gary Crosby – bass

Rod Youngs - drums

Denys Baptiste is an outstanding saxophonist of international acclaim, renowned for his ability to make complex music accessible, creating mature, melodic, and highly memorable compositions that lodge in the memory on first hearing. Be Where You Are – his 1999 debut album on independent jazz label, Dune Records – earned him a Mercury Music Prize for Album Of The Year and a MOBO award for Best Jazz Act. He followed this in 2001 with his second album, Alternating Currents (Dune Records DUNECD05) also receiving great critical acclaim.

2003 saw the release of his third, and most ambitious, recording/touring project to date: Let Freedom Ring! (Dune Records DUNECD010), an inspirational, uplifting suite combining contemporary jazz, gospel, blues, and Afro-Cuban music with extracts of the epic poem, Mental Fight by Booker Prize-winning author, Ben Okri, who narrates the piece. Commissioned by the Cheltenham Jazz Festival/Jerwood Foundation, Let Freedom Ring! commemorated the 40th anniversary of the historic ‘I Have A Dream’ oration by American civil rights activist, Dr Martin Luther King, and was nominated for Best Album and Best New Work at the BBC Jazz Awards, for Best Jazz Act at the MOBO (Music Of Black Origin) Awards, and Best Album in the UK Parliamentary Jazz Awards.

With this new set for 2010 Baptiste returns to a classic quartet format which will give audiences an opportunity to engage more intimately with the artist and experience the full might of this saxophone colossus. And although it’s his most progressive set to date, the music still remains entirely accessible with melodic free-flowing, contemporary compositions. Also very evident is the significant growth in his artistic maturity and stature.

‘Identity By Subtraction’ is Baptiste’s new studio recording planned for late Summer 2010 release, and features pianist Andrew McCormack, double bassist Gary Crosby and drummer Rod Youngs, offering him the perfect setting for his fiery solo improvisations among the tight ensemble playing of this formidable and highly intuitive band. Both the album and live set conjugate the many cultural impressions and expressions of Europe, North America and the Caribbean that have come to define the artist, Denys Baptiste.

"Baptiste's skill as a writer and bandleader bears comparison with Charles Mingus" The Times

"An icon of British jazz" Time Magazine

"An imposing figure. Mr Baptiste is a Jazz weathervane" The New York Times

"Incandescent. [“Let Freedom Ring!” is] A big leap forward in Baptiste's short but already illustrious career" The Guardian

"[“Let Freedom Ring!” is] A profound yet totally accessible musical response to Dr Martin Luther King's timeless declaration" Echoes