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Tracks and release date confirmed

It’s an achievement in itself to perform at the Montreux jazz festival, the Swiss summertime festival founded by the late Claude Nobs, one of the few festivals to stand tall with Newport in jazz mythology where the whole notion of a jazz festival was born in the first place.

Now the Neil Cowley Trio have gone one step further with the release of Live at Montreux 2012 confirmed for a 29 April release by Eagle.

The Cowley band played the festival for the first time on 11 July last year and the release comes hard on the heels of the trio winning the accolade of UK jazz artist of the year at the prestigious Jazz FM awards in January following a public vote.

London-born pianist Cowley, 40, with Australian bassist Rex Horan and New Zealander Evan Jenkins on drums take jazz to a new generation within a classic jazz piano trio format, their music laced with influences including EST, indie rock, and electronic dance music. Cowley is also known for his work with Adele appearing on 19 and 21 and features crucially on monster hit ‘Rolling in the Deep’, the pianist’s ability to build hypnotic drama in his backing to the vocal part of the song’s wide appeal.

2012 besides recording in Montreux saw the band’s biggest UK concert to date with a Barbican hall gig accompanied by strings during the London Jazz Festival.

Live in Montreux as well as appearing as a DVD is also released as a CD, and on Blu-Ray. Tracks are: ‘Lament’, Rooster Was a Witness’, ‘Distance By Clockwork’, ‘Slims’, ‘Hug The Greyhound’, ‘Kenny Two Steps’, ‘Box Lily’, ‘How Do We Catch Up’, ‘Hope Machine’, ‘Meyer’, ‘Skies Are Rare’, ‘La Porte’, ‘Fable’, ‘The Face of Mount Molehill’, and ‘She Eats Flies.’

The Cowley trio (originally featuring Richard Sadler on bass) debuted with Displaced in 2006, from which ‘She Eats Flies’ ‘How Do We Catch Up’ and ‘Kenny Two Steps’ are taken. The album won a BBC jazz award the following year and went into the studio to record Loud…Louder….Stop, which then appeared in 2008 although no tracks from this album are featured on the DVD. ‘Hug The Greyhound’ from the follow-up Radio Silence is, though, included, as is ‘Box Lily’ released in 2010, the last to feature Sadler, with the rest of the material drawn from The Face of Mount Molehill, an album that saw rocker Horan join and the band augmented with strings and electronic textures. This new release should further enhance the trio’s reputation internationally with American touring having already begun in earnest last year.
Stephen Graham

The Neil Cowley trio top and the cover of the DVD above