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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Comes in cardboard digisleeve with spot UV detail on cover. Printed onto FSC certified sustainable card with vegetable based ink.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Good Days via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 3 days

      £13 GBP or more 

     

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      £9 GBP  or more

     

  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 7 Beats & Pieces Big Band releases available on Bandcamp and save 20%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Good Days, time (Nick Walters remix), ten, time, All In, Big Ideas, and Live @ Band on the Wall. , and , .

    Purchasable with gift card

      £25.20 GBP or more (20% OFF)

     

1.
wait 02:20
2.
op 05:31
3.
elegy 09:21
4.
db 02:08
5.
cminriff 06:32
6.
7.
woody 07:03
8.

about

Think of big bands and you’re most likely to think of the halcyon days of mid-twentieth-century jazz and the likes of Duke Ellington and Count Basie. This would infer that big band music is an obsolete format, a relic from decades of yore. Founded in 2008 and directed by conductor, composer, arranger, and producer Ben Cottrell, Beats & Pieces give the lie to that notion.

With Good Days, their long-awaited third studio album, they show once again that big band music is a living, expressive thing, more than capable of continuing development in our own times. Put simply, there are things a big band say and do that cannot otherwise be said and done, and Beats & Pieces say and do plenty here, with exhilarating immaculacy and imagination. This ensemble swings, twenty-first century style.

Good Days ranges emotionally from the funereal to the exuberant, the ecclesiastical to the profane, the pacific to the chaotic. Fleetingly, you think of Charles Mingus, Keith Tippett, Gil Evans, Charlie Haden’s Liberation Orchestra... But there’s also a post-rock undertow to many of these tracks which shows a consciousness of such contemporaries as Björk, Radiohead, or Everything Everything.

credits

released January 27, 2023

Ben Cottrell : director
Anthony Brown, Emily Burkhardt, Oliver Dover : saxophones
Simon Lodge, Rich Mcveigh, Phil O’Malley : trombone
Owen Bryce, Graham South, Nick Walters : trumpet
Anton Hunter : guitar
Richard Jones : piano/Rhodes
Stewart Wilson : bass
Finlay Panter : drums

recorded by Garry Boyle at Castlesound, Pencaitland 20–23 January 2020
additional recording by Biff Roxby at The Wood Rooms, Manchester 6 January 2021 and Seadna McPhail at Airtight Studios, Manchester, 27 September 2021
sound design by Tullis Rennie
mixed by Garry Boyle at Slate Room Studio, Pencaitland
mastered by Stuart Hamilton at Castlesound, Pencaitland
produced by Ben Cottrell
executive produced by Ben Cottrell and Daniela Gerstmann
sleeve designed by Ten

wait and wait (reprise) composed by Anthony Brown, arranged by Ben Cottrell
op composed by Finlay Panter, arranged by Ben Cottrell
all other tracks composed and arranged by Ben Cottrell

op features Richard Jones (piano)
elegy features Oliver Dover (alto saxophone)
cminriff features Anthony Brown (tenor saxophone)
(blues for) linu features Graham South (trumpet) and Finlay Panter (drums) woody features Phil O’Malley (trombone)

forest field-recording from Dählhölzliwald, Bern, 4 April 2020
train station field recording from Berlin Hauptbahnhof, 16 March 2016 bells field recording from Münsterplatz, Bern 26 July 2020
all field recordings by Ben Cottrell

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Beats & Pieces Big Band Manchester, UK

Beats & Pieces Big Band are one of the most exciting acts to emerge from the North of England’s fertile jazz scene this century. Under the direction of conductor and composer Ben Cottrell, they are at the forefront of a new generation of large ensembles reinventing big band music for the 21st century. As Cottrell says “Beats & Pieces is not your average big band, rather a band that’s big”. ... more

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