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
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