Two great musicians:
Gwilym Simcock (born 24 February 1981) is a Welsh pianist and composer working in both jazz and classical music. He was chosen as one of the 1000 Most Influential People in London by the Evening Standard. He was featured on the front cover of the August 2007 issue of the UK’s Jazzwise magazine.
Simcock was born in Bangor, Gwynedd. At the age of eleven he attained the highest marks in the country for his Associated Board on both piano and French horn.
He studied classical piano, French horn, and composition at Chetham’s School, Manchester, where he was introduced to jazz by pianist and teacher Les Chisnall and bassist and teacher Steve Berry. He studied jazz piano at The Royal Academy of Music, London with John Taylor, Nikki Iles, Nick Weldon, and Geoff Keezer. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Music and won the “Principal’s Prize” for outstanding achievement. At the Royal Academy of Music he studied with Milton Mermikides. (wikipedia)
Yuri Goloubev (born 27 July 1972) is a jazz musician, composer and double bass player.[1] He switched to jazz in 2004 after over a dozen years as a bass player in classical orchestras, and has achieved success in jazz also as a performer with “perfect pitch, flawless execution and an improviser’s imagination”. He is also praised for his arco playing Ian Patterson, writing in All About Jazz wrote “There are few better exponents of arco, and his tone has the warm resonance of a cello.”
Gwilym Simcock felt released from the unbending rigours of a classical-piano schooling by the discovery of jazz in his teens, but he has never abandoned its inspirations – and in this duo with the remarkable Russian double-bass virtuoso Yuri Goloubev, he has a partner who shares his love of 19th-century Romanticism, and with whom he shares perfect pitch, flawless execution and an improviser’s imagination.
Recorded at Act Records’ favourite Alpine location, Duo Art shimmers and dances with European art-music references, which surface in the elegant themes (Goloubev’s nods to Schumann and Brahms are particularly unambiguous), the liquid movement of Simcock’s improv phrasing, and Goloubev’s astonishingly light-touch lyricism and cello-like purity.
The Russian’s fast pizzicato improvisation on his own trancelike Lost Romance is breathtaking. Simcock’s Shades of Pleasure opens at a playful skip but shifts mood between reflectiveness and sprinting intensity, the fast-moving Antics finds both players revelling in the driving momentum while never missing a step, and the lively Flow draws the bassist into a floating high-register tone so pristine as to be almost eerie. The prevailing lyrical elegance doesn’t hamper the improv attack of either participant, though the set might be a little over-pristine and melodically orthodox for hardcore jazzers. (by John Fordham)
Recorded at Schloss Elmau, March 13, 2013
Personnel:
Yuri Goloubev (bass)
Gwilym Simcock (piano)
Tracklist:
01. Pastoral (Simcock) 8.15
02. Lost Romance (Goloubev) 7.03
03. Shades Of Pleasure (Simcock) 7.04
04. Antics (Simcock) 4.09
05. A Joy Forever (Simcock) 6.15
06. Non-Schumann Lied (Goloubev) 8.27
07. Flow (Simcock) 5.49
08. Vain Song (Goloubev) 7.15
09. Reverie (Bottesini) 7.06
More from Gwilym Simcock in this blog:
The official Gwilym Simcock website:
More from Yuri Goloubev in this blog:
The official Yuri Goloubev website:
ManyFantasticColors 