Denys Baptiste
@ the PizzaExpress Jazz Club
16 March 2011

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Biography

Born in Hounslow, West London of St Lucian parents in 1969, Denys Baptiste is an award-winning jazz artist, composer and educator. An outstanding saxophonist of international acclaim, Denys is renowned for his ability to make complex music accessible, creating mature, melodic, and highly memorable compositions that lodge in the memory on first hearing. Be Where You Are – his 1999 debut album on independent jazz label, Dune Records – earned him a Mercury Music Prize for An Album Of The Year and a MOBO award for Best Jazz Act. He followed this in 2001 with his second album, Alternating Currents (Dune Records DUNECD05) also receiving great critical acclaim. 2003 saw the release of his third, and most ambitious, recording/touring project to date: Let Freedom Ring! (Dune Records DUNECD010), an inspirational, uplifting suite combining contemporary jazz, gospel, blues, and Afro-Cuban music with extracts of the epic poem, Mental Fight by Booker Prize-winning author, Ben Okri who narrates on this piece. Commissioned by the Cheltenham Jazz Festival/Jerwood Foundation, Let Freedom Ring! commemorated the 40th anniversary of the historic ‘I Have A Dream’ oration by American black civil rights activist, Dr Martin Luther King and was nominated for Best Album and Best New Work in the BBC Jazz Awards, for Best Jazz Act in the MOBO (Music Of Black Origin) Awards and Best Album in the UK Parliamentary Jazz Awards.

Identity By Subtraction is Baptiste’s new studio recording first released in December 2010 with a CD release in January 2011, and is a collage of thoughts and improvisations that together create an image that represent the artist's responses to life's experience as a black man of Caribbean descent playing jazz music in the UK today. This is his first release in quartet format since his Mercury-nominated debut, Be Where You Are, and alongside him on tenor and soprano saxophone are pianist Andrew McCormack, double bassist Gary Crosby and drummer Rod Youngs. The album was produced by Jason Yarde and recorded and mixed at Livingston Studios and The Shop by Tony Platt, with mastering by Ray Staff at Air.

Awards: Mercury Music Prize - Album of The Year 1999, MOBO Awards - Best Jazz Act 1999, British Jazz Awards - Rising Star 2000

Nominations: BBC Jazz Awards - Best Album 2004, BBC Jazz Awards - Best New Work 2004, MOBO Awards - Best Jazz Act 2004, Parliamentary Jazz Awards - Best Album 2004.