Break A Vase Alexander Hawkins & MirrorCanon

• 1 The Perfect Sound Would Like to Be Unique 01:36
• 2 Stamped Down, or Shovelled 06:44
• 3 Sun Rugged Billions 04:29
• 4 Generous Souls 05:59
• 5 Faint Making Stones 06:05
• 6 Break a Vase 01:29
• 7 Chaplin in Slow Motion 06:21
• 8 Domingada Open Air 06:51
• 9 Stride Rhyme Gospel 06:30
• 10 Even the Birds Stop to Listen 03:25
• Total Runtime 49:29

Info for Break A Vase

After the album "Togetherness Music", british pianist and composer Alexander Hawkins presents another musical panorama: An ensemble in which his trio with bassist Neil Charles and drummer Stephen Davis meets saxophonist and clarinetist Shabaka Hutchings, guitarist Otto Fischer, and drummer Richard Olátúndé baker. For anybody who has followed Hawkins' work since his emergence on the british improvised music scene in the mid 2000’s this is a fresh band full of familiar musicians with whom Hawkins has played in a wide variety of formations. The new pieces that "break a vase" presents emerge from Hawkins' own imagination, but they also capture the thrust of energy in collaborating with these outstanding musicians.

“Hawkins gives one of his most complete performances to date,” writes kevin Le Gendre in the liner notes. “Nothing is perhaps more majestic than the title track, which comes from Derek walcott’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. ‘Break a vase, and the love that re - assembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.’ Enjoy then all these wily bits and pieces that come together in the kind of daring, courageous construction that is made to last.”

Richard Olátúndé Baker, talking drum, percussion
Neil Charles, double bass
Stephen Davis, drums
Otto Fischer, electric guitar
Alexander Hawkins, grand piano, upright piano, sampler
Shabaka Hutchings, tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, flute

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Alexander Hawkins
is a composer, pianist, organist, and bandleader who is ‘unlike anything else in modern creative music’ (Ni Kantu) and whose recent work has reached a ‘dazzling new apex’ (Downbeat). Self-taught, he works in a vast array of creative contexts. His own highly distinctive soundworld is forged through the search to reconcile both his love of free improvisation and profound fascination with composition and structure. In 2012, he was chosen as a member of the first edition of the London Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Soundhub’ scheme for young composers. He also received a major BBC commission in late 2012 for a fifty minute composition: One Tree Found was first performed and broadcast in March 2013, and was subsequently performed and broadcast for the WDR in Cologne (2014). He has also twice been commissioned by the London Jazz Festival (once as composer, once as an arranger), and by the Cheltenham Jazz Festival (2016).

His writing for his own groups has been said to represent ‘a fundamental reassertion of composition within improvised music’ (Point of Departure). One review of his Ensemble’s debut record, No Now Is So (FMR Records), wrote of ‘such absolute joy and strength...an incredible record’ (Clifford Allen, Bagatellen). The album featured heavily in top ten albums of 2009 lists on both sides of the Atlantic. The group’s second album, all there, ever out, was said to mark them out as one of the ‘most vividly distinctive [groups] in modern jazz’ (The Jazzmann). Step Wide, Step Deep, released in late 2013, charts the latest chapter in the group’s development. Recent trio and solo albums have also met with critical acclaim, with Canadian journal Textura describing ‘a remarkable pianist, one possessing staggering technical ability and a fecund imagination as both player and composer.’

The Convergence Quartet features American Taylor Ho Bynum, Canadian Harris Eisenstadt, and Dominic Lash from the UK. Their four albums – Live in Oxford (FMR Records, 2007), Song/Dance (Clean Feed, 2010), Slow and Steady (NoBusiness, 2013) and Owl Jacket (NoBusiness, 2015) –have all been enthusiastically reviewed throughout the UK, Europe, and North America, evincing ‘a sustained sense of open-mouthed surprise’ (BBC Music).

Decoy – a trio in which Hawkins plays Hammond Organ –‘redefine the words ‘shock and awe’’ (Jazzwise). The Guardian’s John Fordham highlighted potential for a ‘cult following’; while critic Brian Morton recently commented that ‘[t]he most interesting Hammond player of the last decade and more, [Hawkins] has already extended what can be done on the instrument.’

An in-demand sideman, Hawkins continues to be heard live and on record with vast array of contemporary leaders, such as Evan Parker, John Surman, Joe McPhee, and Mulatu Astatke. He has also been heard in more ad hoc collaborations with the likes of Wadada Leo Smith, Anthony Braxton, and Marshall Allen. He has also been noted in recent years for his performances in the bands of legendary South African drummer, Louis Moholo-Moholo. A duo album, ‘Keep Your Heart Straight’, was released on the Ogun label in October 2012, and has been called ‘a classic in waiting’ (John Eyles). Concert appearances have taken him to club, concert and festival stages worldwide. His music has been broadcast extensively on BBC Radio, as well as in Europe and beyond. National Public Radio in the United States featured him in a 2010 ‘5 Young British Jazz Artists to Watch’ piece, whilst he also appeared on France Musique as one of five artists representing ‘la nouvelle vague du jazz anglais.’ He also appears regularly both as a specialist interviewer and interviewee for the BBC.

Booklet for Break A Vase