I met James during the end of the 90's when he toured with one of my favourite saxophonists: Abraham Burton. I was mesmerized by his unique way of playing the piano. Very different from everything I had hard until then. We became friends and stayed in touch and when visiting New York City, James took me to some very cool jam sessions and concerts. Not only is he an multi-instrumentalist, playing all kinds of keys, percussion, drums, guitar, singing and who knows what.... but also travelling in musical styles, varying from Free Jazz to Bebop, to Hiphop to Soulful House. He introduced me to the music of Soulive, DJ Spinna, Real Live Show but also Phineas Newborn, Melvin Gibbs and Adam Rudolph. Have a look at his credits on Discogs and read abut him on Wikipedia.
James Hurt playing jazz during a reunion gig with Abraham Burton in 2014.
James Hurt sitting in at a funk gig with Eric Krasno, Nigel Hall, Nikki Glaspie and others.
These are 2 of his many faces... On Saxify he plays on "Susie Saxophone", "Tudo Bem", "Sugar Sweet", "Angeldelic" and "Elixir". He's one of the musicians I really wanted to have on my record because he's just something else. He doesn't have a website, check out his Youtube channel with his uploads and things he likes, sometimes very experimental, sometimes not :-)
So the first time we played the music from Royalty For Real wasn't in Amersfoort, the Netherlands, but in Bengaluru and Mumbai, all the way in India in 2023!Here you'll see me play Au Privave, Classy Cats and Royalty For Real, together with Timothy Banchet (piano), Marius Beets (bass) and Sven Rozier (drums).Au Privave is a well-known blues by Charlie Parker which I often like to start with, almost like a soundcheck tune. Although most of the time a soundcheck is done I found out it's a good idea to play a tune everybody of the band knows very well so we all can get used to the sound of the stage, the presence of the audience and it also gives the sound engineer the chance to adjust microphones last minute. During the soundcheck, the sound of the room is significantly different because of the lack of audience. All that flesh and clothes work a little bit like a totally empty room versus a room with furniture and carpets, if you know what I mean :-)Acoustics are so interesting and full of surprises.. Anyways.. hope you like it! - I met James during the end of the 90's when he toured with one of my favourite saxophonists: Abraham Burton. I was mesmerized by his unique way of playing the piano. Very different from everything I had hard until then. We became friends and stayed in touch and when visiting New York City, James took me to some very cool jam sessions and concerts. Not only is he an multi-instrumentalist, playing all kinds of keys, percussion, drums, guitar, singing and who knows what.... but also travelling in musical styles, varying from Free Jazz to Bebop, to Hiphop to Soulful House. He introduced me to the music of Soulive, DJ Spinna, Real Live Show but also Phineas Newborn, Melvin Gibbs and Adam Rudolph. Have a look at his credits on Discogs and read abut him on Wikipedia.James Hurt playing jazz during a reunion gig with Abraham Burton in 2014.James Hurt sitting in at a funk gig with Eric Krasno, Nigel Hall, Nikki Glaspie and others.These are 2 of his many faces...On Saxify he plays on Susie Saxophone, Tudo Bem, Sugar Sweet, Angeldelic and Elixir. He's one of the musicians I really wanted to have on my record because he's just something else.He doesn't have a website, check out his Youtube channel with his uploads and things he likes, sometimes very experimental, sometimes not :-)BewarenBewarenBewaren
