Bass player Kyle Eastwood returns with a new album ‘Timepieces’ and UK tour

Bass player Kyle Eastwood returns with a new album ‘Timepieces’ and UK tour. Eastwood shows his passion for 1950s and 1960s hard bop with his own takes on Herbie Hancock’s ‘Dolphin Dance’ and Horace Silver’s ‘Blowin’ The Blues Away’ together with original compositions. Son of movie director Clint, Kyle Eastwood’s work for the silver screen is included on the album with a theme from his score for Letters From Iwo Jima, reinterpreted as a piano and bass duet.

"What I wanted to do in this record is to pay my debt to the jazz from the late 50s and early 60s," he said. "This lyrical hard bop, full of groove and sophisticated harmonies played by Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers when Lee Morgan and Wayne Shorter were part of it, Horace Silver's bands on Blue Note or Miles Davis' various quintets throughout the 60s: it's the music I like the most, and that has never ceased to fascinate me since I discovered it as a teenager. What was amazing at the time was how all these groups had an immediately recognisable signature. I wondered where this singularity came from and I concluded that this was primarily down to years of collaboration. It is with this way of thinking and playing the music that I sought to reconnect in this new album."

Pianist Andrew McCormack and trumpeter Quentin Collins remain in the band, with the addition of saxophonist Brandon Allen and Cuban London-based drummer Ernesto Simpson.

"The repertoire has been designed and really worked on collectively," says Kyle. "I brought most of the hardware, snatches of melodies, chord progressions, but most, often terminal, pieces crystallized during rehearsals sessions and interactions. The association that I form with pianist Andrew McCormack and trumpeter Quentin Collins dates almost 10 years now. It is a luxury to be able to develop a project on such a long term.  You can hear it clearly in the music we do. While our complicity is the heart of this quintet, which now has a real homogeneity in sound, the fact that new musicians were introduced into the band is very important. Brandon Allen on saxophones and especially Ernesto Simpson on drums, who is originally from Cuba and brought to the band all his passion and such particular Latin swing, have undoubtedly enriched the music of this album by opening it to new horizons."

'Timepieces' is released April 20th.

UK Tour Dates 2015:

24th April - Fleece Jazz, Stoke by Nayland
25th April - Pizza Express, Maidstone
27th April - The Regal Cinema, Evesham
29th April - The Tivoli Theatre, Wimborne
1st May - The Concorde Club, Eastleigh
20th May - Ronnie Scott's, London
21st May - Ronnie Scott's, London
22nd May - Ronnie Scott's, London
23rd May - Ronnie Scott's, London
24th May - Taliesin Arts Centre, Swansea