big year

Description

http://denovali.com/greghaines/ from 'Where We Were' [CD|2xLP|DIGITAL] available from May 2013 Greg Haines is an English musician and composer who has been living in Berlin since 2008. He was born in a small town in the south of England in the 1980s, where he began from a young age to develop an interest in sound and the devices used to create it. At this point, Greg began to develop his piano (and eventually cello) playing, alongside slowly finding his way around in the world of production, which led to assembling a rudimentary bedroom studio set-up and beginning to record tracks on his own. After some years of experimenting, eventually the album 'Slumber Tides' was created and released on Erik Skodvin's Miasmah label in 2006. The album was critically acclaimed worldwide, leading to the opening track, 'Snow Airport', being used on the Universal/Point Music compilation 'Reflections on Classical Music', alongside compositions from some of the very composers who inspired it, such as Gavin Bryars and Philip Glass. In the wake of his debut, Greg toured extensively and began to develop as a live performer, and in particular as an improviser with a wide range of various musicians. To date, Greg has toured throughout Europe, Japan, Australia and the USA. In March 2010, Berlin's Sonic Pieces label released 'Until the Point of Hushed Support', a forty- eight minute composition written for string quintet, church organ, piano, percussion, electronics and a whole array of other sounds and textures that were carefully constructed over two years. Later, in March 2012, "Digressions" was released on Australia's Preservation label. The album includes performances by Peter Broderick and violinist Iden Reinhart, as well as an 18 piece student ensemble. The album was largely seen as a great success, with one reviewer for Fluid Radio writing "...Well over a month I've been listening to it, and I still cannot for the life of me work out why I think it is one of the best records I have ever heard, one that has clicked with me like few else recently. Music is subjective, and what is a masterpiece to me may sound like nothing of the sort to you; an assessment based solely on my opinion and little else. Still, if I was to put money on it, I'd say that 'Digressions' is going to be talked about for some years, and will in hindsight be the point where the Haines' trajectory will be seen to trend sharply upwards." Since 2008, he has also been working regularly as a composer for dance, creating music for choreographers such as Meg Stuart (Berlin), Ina Christel Johannessen (Oslo), and the MD Collective (Cologne). In February 2012, Greg premiered a new work with contemporary Ballet choreographer David Dawson, the Holland Symfonia and the Dutch National Ballet as part of their 50th anniversary celebrations. Roslyn Sulcas for The New York Times wrote: "The work is dark, both literally and metaphorically, but also exquisitely, wrenchingly, beautiful; a world of its own that draws you ineluctably within." In 2011, The Alvaret Ensemble was formed. Based around improvisation, Greg Haines, Jan Kleefstra, Romke Kleefstra, and Sytze Pruiksma make up its core, and their debut album (featuring Peter Broderick, Hilary Jeffery, Iden Reinhart and Martyn Heyne) was released in December 2012 by Denovali records as a 2xLP or 2xCD. A few months later, another ensemble, called simply "The Group", was formed around Haines, Peter Broderick, Casper Clausen (of Efterklang) and Francesco Donadello. Although also based on improvisation, the result is a very different palette of sounds and an ethos that aims to break down the audience/performer divide an re-establish music as a social, participatory experience. 2013 is set to be a big year. In May, Denovali will release "Where We Were", a new album which focuses on synthesizers and percussion. In conjunction with this, a vinyl boxset consisting of Greg's three previous albums will be released, so listeners can finally enjo...