BASCA announce ‘Contemporary Jazz Composition’ nominees

The British Composer Awards is a creation of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA). This year is the 12th awards. They set out to promote the art of composition, giving recognition to composers and bringing their music to a wider audience.

This year’s ‘Contemporary Jazz Composition’ nominees are pianist Django Bates and saxophonists Julian Argüelles and John Butcher.

Django Bates is a founder member of the legendary 1980s band Loose Tubes, as well as his own Delightful Precipice, Beloved Trio and more. He's a jazz educator occupying two professorial posts in universities in Europe. He also won the won the coveted Jazzpar Prize in 1997, an annual Danish award with the winner chosen from five nominees, among internationally recognized jazz musicians. Bates’ nomination is for his work ‘The Study Of Touch’  commissioned by the Norbotten Big Band.

Like Bates, Julian Argüelles is a member of the Tubes and toured and recorded globally with world class musicians such as Brazilian Hermeto Pascoal, British bass man Dave Holland, guitarist John Scoffield, the late Kenny Wheeler and many more. A couple of years ago he was ‘Composer in Residence’ at the Luzern Jazz School in Switzerland and has taught at both the Royal Academy of Music and Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Argüelles was nominated for ‘Hocus Pocus’, written for jazz quartet and premiered at Fleece Jazz in Colchester.

Saxophonist John Butcher left the University Of Surrey, and his promising future as physicist, over thirty years ago. He’s known as a solo performer who makes music that resonates with unique places and spaces. Butcher’s nomination was for his work ‘Tarab Cuts’, a new concert length work combining composition and improvisation around vintage recordings of traditional Sufi music common in Turkey, Morocco and West Africa to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The winner will be announced on December 3rd.

For more information on the awards click here