Bill Laurance

A mere mention of the names of Michael League and Bill Laurance makes one think of Snarky Puppy. It is now nearly twenty years since Southern California-born bassist/multi-instrumentalist Michael League founded the globally acclaimed, four-time GRAMMY award-winning collective. As for keyboardist Bill Laurance, originally from London, he has been a part of the globe-trotting adventure for nearly as long as League has. So the fact that League and Laurance are now releasing "Where you Wish you Were", their first duo album together, does feel at the same time like a logical development…and also a surprise. Michael League takes a very different role here from the one he does in Snarky Puppy.

Bloom, the ACT debut of pianist and composer Bill Laurance as leader, marks the transition from the smallest possible form of musical interaction to a large-scale, broadband format: Following the internationally acclaimed ACT release Where You Wish You Were in duo with multi-instrumentalist and Snarky Puppy bandmate Michael League, Laurance now teams up with Manchester-based 18-piece string orchestra The Untold Orchestra and creates a work of convincingly epic pro-portions. Combining Bill Laurance’s classical sensibilities with jazz, pop grooves, and powerful orchestral synchronicity, Bloom runs the gamut of emotions and moods.

"An epic sympatico collaboration that soars with emotional power – Laurance and the Untold Orchestra are a perfect match."

Recorded live in May 2015 at Union Chapel in London, this powerful album showcases the very best of Grammy-winning keyboardist and Snarky Puppy founding member Bill Laurance's solo catalogue. Laurence is accompanied by his Snarky Puppy bandmates Michael League on electric and upright bass and drummer Robert Sput Searight, with contributions from percussionist Felix Higgenbottom, a full string section and a French horn player. This is a truly great contemporary jazz piano concert with nods to modal jazz icon Bill Evans, post-Coltrane giants McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock and the fusion of Joe Zawinul and Chick Corea.

Snarky Puppy founder, multi-instrumentalist and Grammy winner Michael League and cossover piano icon Bill Laurance take us to an imaginary place full of beauty, peace and energy. Musical escapism, world jazz 2.0 and an invitation to a place where we wish to be.

Recorded live at the world-renowned Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club during the 2018 International Piano Trio Festival, Bill Laurance Trio’s new album strikes a delicate balance between honouring a longstanding tradition, and outlining a creative vision for its development. On the one hand, the London-based pianist and composer’s reverence for the live trio recordings of Oscar Peterson, Ahmad Jamal, and Bill Evans informed both the nature of his and his bandmates’ performance, and their approach to the treatment and mix of the resultant material.

Recorded in front of an enthusiastic audience at the Philharmonie concert hall in Cologne, Germany, Bill Laurance’s new live album is powered by the renowned 18-piece WDR Big Band. Under the direction of principal conductor Bob Mintzer (renowned tenor saxophonist, longtime member of the Yellowjackets, and leader of his own Grammy-winning Bob Mintzer Big Band), this adventurous outing finds Laurance re-imagining previously recorded works on a much grander scale.

Stylistically diverging from his previous solo material, Affinity centres around the constant in Bill’s diverse musical career; the piano.

Bill Laurance - CablesAn entirely solo recording with Bill playing everything. Centred on Bill's unique and beautiful piano playing, "Cables" consists of eight brand new genre defying compositions, embracing electronica and subtle beats and textures and is co-produced by studio wiz Nic Hard.