Channel: Jazz Night in America

Category: Music

Tags: blue whalerisksmark de clive-lowejazzchurchimprovisecapoeiracreativitylos angelescreative

Description: Mark de Clive-Lowe is a jazz artist with both a visionary outlook and an old soul. As a concert pianist, deeply steeped in the jazz tradition, he’s courageously committed himself to modern forms of hip-hop and electronic music. He recognized early that playing 88 keys the ways his elders before him, couldn’t satisfy his creative aspirations of living in the present. So, in his mid 20s, after already achieving serious accolades in pianism, de Clive-Lowe abandoned his first instrument to learn the ways of a modern beat maker. The half Japanese, half New Zealand artist bunkered himself inside London’s burgeoning broken beat music scene for more than a decade, where he began to master the innovative ways of improvisational electronic artists. There, he experimented on a wide range of samplers, sequencers, synthesizers, sound manipulation devices which allowed him to take his jazz predilections and reprogram them for a rave dance hall. As Keith Jarrett famously created a full concert out of thin air from his solo piano playing, what if de Clive-Lowe could do it today by employing new music technology? The result is an intoxicating form of jazz-fused hip-hop house music. After achieving success in this new frontier of music-making, de Clive-Lowe’s artistry has now reached a new apex after re-committing himself to the acoustic piano, only this time, with his full arsenal of gadgets as an electronic artist. As we showcase in this Jazz Night In America video, there’s nobody else quite like de Clive-Lowe able to employ disparate musical strategies in a improvisational jazz space. De Clive-Lowe compares his concept to “the needle drop,” as it is referred to in the most urgent forms of hip-hop. In a typically chaotic jazz setting, prone to unexpected shifts and improvisation, he quickly identifies, and reformulates loop patterns by sampling himself and his bandmates, creating an otherworldly montage of soundscapes while also evoking a deeply visceral dance experience. --SIMON RENTNER ————————————————————— FOLLOW US! Facebook: facebook.com/jazznight Twitter: twitter.com/jazznight Instagram: instagram.com/jazznightinamerica