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Music

Jazzwise Sneak Peek

By Jazzwise Mag

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https://covver.com/magazine/jazzwise/jazzwise-sneak-peek
Published
Mar 19, 2025
Pages
10
Language
English

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  • Page 4Bobby Colomby, there was a whole bunch of them, Al Foster, the list goes on, all working their way to graduation. Warren Smith was a teacher there, a great percussionist with Gil Evans. It was perfect for me, not only was it a music school but it was also an art school, so the late Jeremy Steig, known for being proficient playing the flute, was actually a painter. He was studying painting, but he was a good flute player, made some great records. In a situation like in High School, the requirement was that you play together with your colleagues, and to be really good at contributing as a participant; so therefore my foundation was very strong. They had Billy Cobham, who was a sensation, he could create these kind of pyrotechnic things people had never heard before and when Michael Brecker soloed it was so far ahead!"
  • Page 5lot of time if you have a front line of - hypothetically - Joe Henderson, J.J Johnson and Freddie Hubbard. The thank-yous you get are not in words. When someone calls you on the phone and asks you, 'Are you free tomorrow for a session that starts at 10am, probably a double session, that's your thank-you for the things which you did before. They don't say, 'that sounds good, no, they ask you to come tomorrow. That's it. "After while I grew stale, and things were changing anyway because of rock n' roll, so I ended up on the road with a series of things I felt I could be a better contributor at"
  • Page 6BACK WITH A BANG! Neil Cowley has decided to re-form his famous trio after performing and recording as a solo artist for seven years. Here he tells Andy Robson why, and what he hopes to achieve...
  • Page 7Neil Cowley was born to a caring, nurturing mum after she had a brief affair with Max Miller's musical director. His father, who led a trio, never told his own family of their half-brother's existence. So, there were secrets within secrets for Cowley. "Every fortnight he would call from a phone box, tell me a joke and the pips would go before he got to the punch line. And every couple years we'd go to Brighton (to meet him)."
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Neil Cowley was born to a caring, nurturing mum after she had a brief affair with Max Miller's musical director. His father, who led a trio, never told his own family of their half-brother's existence. So, there were secrets within secrets for Cowley.

"Every fortnight he would call from a phone box, tell me a joke and the pips would go before he got to the punch line. And every couple years we'd go to Brighton (to meet him)."

That sense of being apart, yet a part of a wider family, seems vital to Cowley's musical trajectory.

"I met Dad's children when I was about 32. They are 25 years older than me. And I realised that my Dad, being the ego-centric that he was, they never got a look in at the piano! He was always on it! Whereas I was left to prosper on my own at the piano.

"I sat down for two months, honing this and that, not sharing with anyone. I always need to do that deal with my own doubts otherwise I get waylaid by the opinion of others. I'm a control freak. It's not great to admit. But I know that now."

The music that bloomed for Entity is epic, yet intimate, hopeful, yet laced with yearning, high energy yet at times diaphanous. It's all those 'dualities' that make Cowley so listenable and the Trio so loved.

And of course, Entity busts any sense of 'genre. Cowley may say, "I've always had trouble fitting into a 'genre. I've always felt that any genre I've dipped into people have said, 'Are you really one of us?' And I may think, 'Do I want to be one of you?" But that's Cowley's gift: to yoke together different styles and traditions, from Shostakovich to Errol Garner. And from that he's created his own music. He is his own genre now, "So, I think I'm quite an experiment genetically. I got so much genetically from Dad. I don't want to disparage him: he was a magnificent fellah. But in a way there was a bit of fire in me that I bordering on the transcendent. was going to be better than him."

"Sub-consciously I used the angst as a driving force in my twenties. So, when I did announce myself (to his half-siblings) I worried I might lose my edge. But it didn't soften me that much!" But Cowley now has his own family, with adult creative children, and he lives in what he calls "a quintessentially English Village. One thing I won't do is live on the coast. When I visited Dad in Brighton, it always rained." He laughs. But ruefully.

Indeed, most of Entity was written at home, another novelty for Cowley.

"I have a little room at the end of the garden," so he's close to domestic delights but slightly separated.

"My grandfather lived in a chicken coop at the end of the garden. He had 9 children. Everyone needs their chicken coop!

L-R: Rex Horan, Neil Cowley and Evan Jenkins

Printed for mike from Jazzwise - November 2024 at exacteditions.com. Copyright © 2024

"That's good to hear! I want to point people to the universal rather than what is on the ground. We are utterly ludicrous as a species to think we are any more important than that mote of dust over there. We are ridiculous and laughable, and I love that! It gives you a sense of wonder!"

There was a reason Ray Brown nicknamed Garner "The Happy Man. And it may just be Cowley has found his happy place. Perhaps. Possibly. It's the swimming in doubt that keeps us going. And a sense of duty to the Jean Andersons and Eric Stephensons of the world.

We all need our feet on the ground- and our head in the stars.

The Neil Cowley Trio play Earth, Hackney on 19 November as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival

Jazzwise November 2024 25