Soundhouse: Corrie Dick

“Corrie is the perfect drummer/percussionist… colouring each piece with precision, complex rhythms/techniques and visible enjoyment” – London Jazz News

At the rhythmic epicentre of a new era of innovative British jazz is Corrie Dick, a musician and composer specialising in euphoric, sonically-inventive drumming. He is lauded for his dynamism, his melodic slant and for his playfully subversive take on style and genre.

An artist of prolific and varied output, Corrie has long been an essential component of Laura Jurd’s music including Mercury Prize shortlisted Dinosaur; is a crucial co-pilot in Elliot Galvin Trio and Rob Luft Group; and co-writes music with an abundance of artists including alternative Indie band Ink Line. His 2015 release Impossible Things which skilfully fused Celtic folk and contemporary jazz with new takes on African rhythms culminated in sold out touring and concerts across the UK. Now Corrie resets for an album which further embraces the eclectic whims of a child of the iPod shuffle generation – finding cohesion among disparate elements.

As a multi-instrumentalist who has recorded on piano, vocals, synth, guitar and trumpet, Corrie’s writing is uniquely colourful and his playing shaped by many perspectives. The new album Sun Swells showcases all of this. Anchored by a rock guitar trio but with layers of fruity surprises, surging vocal melodies are counterpointed by mercurial horn playing. There is captivating prose written by guest vocalists Dave Malkin of the English folk tradition and Greek-Norwegian Marianna Sangita.

The music on Sun Swells is highly unique in a way that is becoming a trademark for the highly gifted artist. Corrie says: “This is outsider jazz; it’s extremely listenable music that has lots of very current, familiar ingredients but put together in a way you may not be familiar with. Some key elements include soaring folkish melodies, Scandinavian free jazz, 90s-kid grooves, a playful shunning of conventional jazz roles and form, stillness, turbulence, beautiful and ugly-pretty sounds, warmth, stunning lyrical imagery, climate change, feminism, and eclectic guests. It’s an album that embraces contrasts and spectra and that can be listened to in so many ways. It finds cohesion in the disparate.”

The cast on the album comprises a venerable A-list of musicians in the young, dynamic segment of the always-morphing London jazz scene. Corrie explains: “The band is packed with prolific, special artists. The core of this group are musicians with whom I have loads of history in other groups - Laura Jurd (Dinosaur), Rob Luft, Tom McCredie (Elliot Galvin Trio), Joe Wright, Alice Zawadzki, Matt Robinson, Joe Webb. It’s unusual to have such pure synergy between so many musicians at the same time.”

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The Traverse Theatre is funded by Creative Scotland and The City of Edinburgh Council, and has received additional support from the Scottish Government's Performing Arts Venues Relief Fund and Creative Scotland’s Recovery Fund for Cultural Organisations.