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Ten

Beats & Pieces Big Band

The band can do reflective and sensitive but mostly goes for oceanic surging ensembles mixed with elements of rock and the occasional freak-out explosion, creating an exciting and absorbing...

Ten

Beats & Pieces Big Band

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The band can do reflective and sensitive but mostly goes for oceanic surging ensembles mixed with elements of rock and the occasional freak-out explosion, creating an exciting and absorbing...

About

Tenth anniversary live album featuring tracks from Beats & Pieces Big Band first two albums ('Big Ideas' + 'All In'), brand new tracks (including the single "time") and a track from their long deleted 2009 debut EP. Recorded at Royal Northern College of Music, ten years to the day that the band had their first rehearsal in exact same space as students.

"On 27 January 2008 I asked thirteen friends and fellow students to a rehearsal room at Manchester's Royal Northern College of Music to play through some tunes I'd written for big band. From that session, Beats & Pieces Big Band emerged. Exactly ten years on from that first meeting, we invited an audience of friends, family and key supporters to the same RNCM rehearsal space for a special anniversary gig, documented on ten." Ben Cottrell, Beats & Pieces Big Band director

'ten' was recorded at the end of the band's January 2018 UK tour, in the same rehearsal space at the Royal Northern College of Music where the band had gathered as music students ten years to the day earlier. The album acts as a neat anthology of that whole period, including in its ten tracks are three from each of their first two albums, three brand new, as well as one track ("toan") from their long-deleted and now very rare 2009 debut EP. "toan" was also the very first track that bandleader Ben Cottrell composed for big band, and one of the two tracks he brought along to that first 2008 session, yet still sounds fresh and vibrant in the live set and remains a band and audience favourite.

A driving force of the vibrant Manchester music scene and one of the most striking ensembles of its kind, the group continues to win new fans and friends across Europe and beyond. Beats & Pieces is not an average 'big band' - rather a band that's big.

Contents and tracklist

Awards and reviews

October 2018

The band can do reflective and sensitive but mostly goes for oceanic surging ensembles mixed with elements of rock and the occasional freak-out explosion, creating an exciting and absorbing whole.

September 2018

Beats & Pieces have a rawer edge than your typical ‘mainstream’ big band.....the searing guitar riffs and driving rock grooves, that would sound pretty mediocre played separately from the whole, underpin the compositions, eschewing formal big-band methodologies. There’s a hunger and intensity to the solos .....
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