Terry Pack – The Playroom, Arundel

OUT NOW! May 2023.

What a proud and exciting moment! This beautiful album is the first to be recorded here at The Playroom, Arundel using the recently acquired Yamaha Grand Piano (more about that on our previous blog entry here).

The Full Circle Quartet is made up of award winneing musicians and writers and are based in Sussex. They came to The Playroom, Arundel for 3 days in late 2022.

Once settled in, microphones in place, headphone levels set and tea made, the Quartet had a very relaxed and enjoyable few days recording tunes they had previously played live, expanding ideas and tweaking arrangements as they went. (The engineer enjoyed it very much too!!).

All of the members of Full Circle write and arrange, so 12 of the 13 tracks on the album are written and arranged within the band. One track, ‘One January Morning’, was written by friend of the band, multi-reed player Julian Nicholas and was arranged by members of the Quartet.

The album is called ‘The South Downs Suite’ and the music is inspired by and reflects living and working in the South Downs of England.

Josephine Davies – Soprano and Tenor Saxophones. Joss Peach – Piano and Percussion. Terry Pack – Double Bass. Angus Bishop – Drums

You will hear magnificent playing from all involved with ensemble cameos from Kate Hogg (Flutes) and Michelle Andrews (Clarinet and Bass Clarinet).

‘The South Downs Suite’ album is definitely worth a listen if you are a lover of Jazz and Soundtrack-style music. Pure escapism.

The album cover art is detail from a mixed painting named ‘Amberley’ by local artist Polly Dutton, who is working with the Quartet on a companion set of artwork which will be launched at Petworth Festival 2023. More information on this through Polly’s site: www.pollydutton .co.uk.

The Quartet will also be playing at the festival and various other venues through the South, details of which can be found though their website.

The South Downs Suite by The Full Circle Quartet – Recorded, mixed and mastered at The Playroom, Arundel.

Excerpt from ‘Flight of the Dragonfly’ by Josephine Davies

Further information about The Full Circle Quartet including live dates and album details can be found here: www.fullcirclequartet.com

Reviews – What ‘they’ say

Some pre-release comments that the album has received (via Bandcamp):-

fairman*****6

Bought it almost blind because I love Jo’s sound and inventiveness in her playing. However, I now have listened to this whole album. Wow ! what an album. Pianist, Bassist and Drummer are all top draw. A very classy album indeed. Thoroughly recommended for any jazz enthusiast. Go and buy it . You will not be disappointed. On this basis, I would gladly book the band for my Jazz club.

Groo*****8

This is a superb piece, it flows in a wonderful way. Great playing and recording. Just sit back and enjoy.

jazz #jazzmusic #soundtrack #josephinedavies #saxophone #piano #quartet #newmusic #inspiration #classy #album #josspeach #angusbishop #terrypack #juliannicholas #PlayroomArundel #pollydutton

This is how Lewis Harding’s excellent debut jazz album ‘Palm Thievery’ started, here’s the story behind the recording.

Regular client, Lewis, was at the studio one day having just recorded a couple of his new tracks with Kate Hogg featured playing Alto and Tenor Saxophones. The two tracks (‘Above’ and ‘Hue 6’) were originally destined for an ambient guitar-based album, but had taken on a definite jazz feel with Kate’s lyrical Sax melodies and improvisations.

“Maybe you should write a jazz album”, someone said to Lewis.

As the world came to a grinding halt in early 2020 Lewis, out of gigs and the studio closed, used the time to write more melodies and chord lines with a jazz feel in mind.

Before long there was an album worth of tunes and as life briefly eased up Lewis came to The Playroom to start laying down guide chords and melody lines so that we could work on the arrangements. The challenges of recording an album when so restricted with opening hours and numbers of players at once became the next hurdle.

Next a call to Tom Phelan (another regular at the studio) who Lewis had met years previously and we were recording piano parts. This gave Mike Saunders (resident engineer and orchestrator) enough of a framework to write horn section parts. Later on in the process Tom returned to record some fantastic piano solos (‘Above’, ‘Octopods’, ‘Hue 6’ and ‘Palm Thievery’).

In the meantime, taking the opportunity of being allowed out of our houses, we arranged for Terry Pack (Double Bass) and Dave Cottrell (Drums) to record for a couple of days (Terry in the booth, Dave in the live room) which gave all the pieces a real lift as well as finalising the feel and layout of the arrangements.

Studio friend Richard Horne popped in to record the fiendish vibraphone parts. ‘Octopods’ particularly was a ‘bit of a headache’, but as this was a ‘no cut, copy and paste’ album, (all you hear on the album is played for real by all the musicians), we took time to rehearse and perfect. His 4-mallet chord work on the ballads is sublime.

Time to get noisy! On to the horns. Mike had written parts for the horns for all the ‘heads’ and sectional work so it was easy to adhere to social distancing by having one player at a time come to the studio. With such a solid rhythm section already in place, timing was never an issue.

First up:- Julian Nicholas came to record Baritone Sax and Tenor Sax. After the heads and section parts were recorded we let him loose on some free solo sections in ‘George’s Salamander’, ‘Palm Thievery’, ‘Nine Steps Between’ and a marvellous show-stopping Baritone Sax solo on ‘Octopods‘.

Charlotte Glasson spent a morning recording Soprano Sax and Alto Sax to the sectional parts, and added some gorgeous clean lines of improvisation on ‘George’s Salamander’ and ‘Clues in Bhutan’.

And finally for the horn section Martijn Van Galen, an old friend of the studio, came to top-off the sound on Trumpet and Flugelhorn. Great playing and marvellous solos on ‘George’s Salamander’, ‘Octopods’ and ‘Nine Steps Between’.

Martijn Van Galen – Trumpet and Flugelhorn

So to the finishing off. The beauty of being the boss was that Lewis could wait to add his final guitar parts and solo sections at the end of the recording process. A couple of weeks of popping in and out and trying ideas and we had them all down. Just right.

The final stage of any recording is mixing. The secret of this album was to get the overall balance of each of the tracks to sound similar, to ‘join up’ the horn section and make the recording sound like the band were together and recorded at once, when actually, as we know, it was recorded in bits and pieces over a long period of time.

Mike Saunders – Orchestration and Mixing

‘Mixing great musicians makes the job easier,’ Mike said. So actually it didn’t take long. And, as the world was still ‘closed’ there was no real rush to finish which gave time for long breaks between listening and a real chance to find the little bits that would ultimately end up being annoying if left. Once finalised, the mixes were sent to Simon Gibson at Abbey Road Studios in London for mastering before being sent for duplication.

So, we give you ‘Palm Thievery‘, Lewis Harding’s debut jazz album – we hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we have enjoyed making it.

Buy and/or download now from Bandcamp.

https://lewisharding.bandcamp.com/releases

Tag: Terry Pack

The South Downs Suite by The Full Circle Quartet

“Maybe you should write a jazz album”