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Please contact any of Mark Latimer's international representation agencies -

PVA Management - Great Britain

Freeform Jazz - Rome Italy

Svenska Konsertbyrån - Stockholm Sweden

China Art and Culture Co., LTD - China

 

 

 

 

 

 

Verging in that grey area known as genius           

W.S. LLOYD-WEBBER           

 

Soars to ecstatic heights. The colouristic imagination of a Horowitz.

THE GRAMOPHONE

 

Like a bat out of hell. A distinctly untamed spirit - formidably gifted

THE INDEPENDENT 

 

Formidable technique - lightning fingered

THE TIMES

 

Mind-blowing improvisations, unclassifiable           

JAZZWISE

 

One of the most innovative musicians to have emerged in years

CADENCE MAGAZINE - USA

 

Horowitz-like fury - has you on the edge of your seat

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE

 

British classical music's enfant terrible

TIME OUT - LONDON

 

Mark Latimer is one of the UK's most remarkable jazz pianists

THE GUARDIAN

 

Startlingly original - you find yourself holding your breath

JAZZ REVIEW

 

Spectacular - all-out nuclear assault!

INTERNATIONAL RECORD REVIEW

 

Luminous sophisticated wizardry

THE GRAMOPHONE

 

Creating his own special niche in contemporary music

John Fordham - THE GUARDIAN

 

Top class contemporary post-bop piano - outstandingly good

JAZZ JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL

 

He takes all the ferocious technical demands in his stride

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE

 

He possesses all the qualities required - hair-raising

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

 

Unique musical mind - the definitive one-off

JAZZ UK

 

Latimer has brought respectability to the overused term “eclecticism

CHRIS PARKER - The Times

 

A very different sort of jazz musician indeed

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE

 

Typically Latimer - an artistic powerhouse - legendary

John Fordham - THE GUARDIAN

 

dangerous, man, dangerous

GORDON BECK

 

One crazy motherf*****

Kirk Lightsey

 

One of the leading musicians of his generation

The Western Mail

 

He possesses the technique of a young Hororwitz

Boguslav Maciejewski

 

An extraordinarily astonishing virtuoso

The Yorkshire Post

 

A musician of exceptionally rare gifts

John McCabe

 

The only pianist I've ever heard who would make Art Tatum regain his sight!

Irvine Manning - bass player with Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman

 

 

 

 

 

Full Arts Page Feature - The Western Mail

 

PROFESSOR WHO BREAKS DOWN BARRIERS

 

You can’t help being overawed by Mark Latimer. At the age of 16 he performed both the Brahms Piano  Concertos in a single concert, at 18 he was appointed professor at The London College of Music and at the age of 22 he performed the Alkan Concerto for Solo Piano - from memory - called the most difficult piece ever written, at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. He is described in reviews as ‘dangerous’, explosive’, ‘iconoclastic’ and ‘electrifying’. Latimer’s incredible accomplishments have been fuelled not by ambition but by the sheer drive of the music itself and it is this which has allowed him to break down musical barriers in the most innovative manner. Aside from being one of the UK’s most prestigious classical musicians - he has performed over 75 concertos, cycles of the complete works of Balakirev, Chopin, Ravel and Schubert as well as countless contemporary composers - he is also a hugely distinguished jazz artist. Having played with such eminent musicians as Guy Barker, John Dankworth, Harry Edison, Stan Getz, Stacey Kent, Jim Mullen, Teddy Royal, Buddy Tate, Jerry Underwood et.al.,and has frequented venues the length and breadth of Britain from The Royal Festival Hall to Ronnie Scott’s via the Royal Opera House and the Pizza Express. He adds a new top establishment to that inexhaustible list on Friday when his trio appears at The Four Bars here in St. Mary’s Street Cardiff where he will record the latest in an extremely long line of jazz albums, ‘Nil by Mouth’. “It’s a relaxed and informal venue, which is exactly the kind of desirable setting for such an undertaking”, he says. The informal and relaxed approach - he never uses the score in performances and has not finalised his programme for Friday - has been a hallmark of his career. Yet his virtuosity and versatility means that he not only plays the most demanding works in the repertoire but also is able to learn them at frightening and astonishing speed. When the score for the ‘near impossible’ Max Reger Variations and Fugue on a theme of Telemann arrived from Berlin just three days before he was scheduled to record it some years ago, he was unfazed and was on time in the studio. This and two more live jazz albums of original compositions, one recorded in Japan and one in Holland are due for release soon along with another live CD of the complete Liszt Transcendental Etudes  As a teenage professor he had to become inured to the inevitable bitching and badmouthing from colleagues three or four times his age and his refreshingly unorthodox attitude makes him and undogmatic tutor. “I have never felt students should be stultified by endless and pointless scales, exercises and exams” says Latimer who is currently professor of keyboard at the Faculty of Music, University of Wales.‘My approach was that I would rather turn out shelf-fillers, shop-keepers and politicians with a genuine love of music rather than competent automatons whose enthusiasm had been eroded by years of these mind-numbingly extraneous rituals” Compared to his classical career, he was a comparatively late starter as a jazz musician. His access to the music was as a child, foraging through his father’s 78s, but it was not until his early twenties that things took off. Since then he has built up a substantial reputation working with practically all the leading exponents of seemingly every persuasion and winning tremendous praise from experts. It was Gordon Beck who famously described him as ‘dangerous’ after a performance at the Cheltenham International Jazz Festival and  Brecon Festival Director and jazz columnist Jed Williams commented on his ‘formidable musicianship and modest disposition’ in a recent article. His outfit The Great Glass Bead Game (named after the Herman Hesse novel about a music and mathematical improvisational game) offers him one jazz outlet along with his current trio and quintets.

The Mark Latimer Trio appears at The Four Bars, St. Mary’s Street, Cardiff at 8.30pm this Friday, BBC Broadcasting House, Cardiff this Saturday and at St. David’s Hall in July.

 

 

BBC Music Magazine

Few pianists balance careers between jazz and classical music like Mark Latimer, a very different sort of jazz musician indeed from the bravura specialist heard on these live recordings. He plays the Alkan Concerto for Solo Piano with a Horowitz-like fury, without the slightest suspicion of sentimentality and none of  Marc-Andre Hamelin’s tasteful respect. You sit on the edge of your seat and most important, the swaggering spirit seems right. The playing in Balakirev’s Islamey is more relaxed and nicely langorous and if it hasn’t quite the daredevil energy that Latimer brings to Alkan, it’s still a pretty impressive performance which originated an encore after a very demanding programme

 

The Guardian

Mark Latimer is one of the UK's most remarkable jazz pianists.  He is a musician who resolutely, even perversely, pursues his own course - a course that takes in phenomenal pianistics on very obscure 19th century classical piano pieces, unexpected bursts of Don Pullen-like percussive chordal freedom, as well as the disarming contents of this disc. Latimer is a real conundrum.  He mostly avoids the regular UK jazz circuit and possesses the broad outlook and virtuosity to play a much wilder and more unpredictable kind of jazz,  this set is certainly worth checking out.  In an elgantly swinging mode, Latimer works his way through alternations of two trios (Mick Hutton on bass Trevor Tomkins on drums in one, Andy Cleyndert and Hal Fisher in the other), and interjections from Mick Hanson's guitar and the thoughtful and skilful Andy Panayi on flute and tenor.  Though the bop-club smoothness of the guitar-led Softly leaves a vague itch for something more angular, Latimer's clattery solo and ironic passing references to Moondance in it are terrific.  His medley of bop licks on Pick 'n' Lix is typically knowing, and the delicate, barely audible Ode to Life is hauntingly reflective.  Lovely piano-playing, but it would be interesting to hear a Latimer set that comes closer to the edge.

 

 

Cadence Magazine - New York - USA

This is quite a session spearheaded by pianist Latimer - esteemed  as the UK's premiere player - but round-toned guitarist John Etheridge and reeds player Andy Panayi are also quite prominently featured in this vigorous music. Latimer is quite a talent with a vast technique and taste as well, in addition to knowing how to write a challenging but memorable tune (such as the workout 'Querulous Queens' and the even more burning 'Bridge on the River Wye' with savage playing from Etheridge and the leader).

Multi-faceted percussionist Asaf Sirkis gets a workout on the slamming 'Six and Seven-Eighths' while bassist Mario Castronari gets  space on the intro to the moody 'Messianic' on which Latimer steps into the spotlight and spins out a very thoughtful solo, both harmonically and rhythmically challenging. The band generates an appropriately ponderous-to-raucous reading of  Mahler (compare with Uri Caine's slightly too-clever interpretations) on which Panayi also sounds great. On the thoroughly re-imagined 'Giant Steps', playing it in 5/4 is only one of the many changes - well done!. 'Peace Piece' is not the Evans tune but a sweet ballad from bassist Castronari. This one's filled with fun and intelligence - seek this out.

 

Fanfare Magazine - USA

The Alkan Concerto for Solo Piano is one of the most hair-raising works ever, in difficulty as well as effect - gargantuan and terrifying. It is Alkan’s biggest composition and  one of the hardest things to play in all piano music. That helps account for its rarity. It’s pointless for any but the best performers to even go near this music. Deliberately and unabashedly, this is a live performance that is unedited. Mark Latimer’s performance is spellbinding for all the right reasons - it’s amazing. Balakirev’s Islamey is a similarly charged live performance - noble and very accomplished.

 

John Fordham  - The Guardian

An artistic powerhouse

Arts reporting being an activity in which the jaded frequently stumble in pursuit of the humdrum, it’s always worth pricking up an ear when the language of reviewers seems to have been jolted into startled alertness. Thus the descriptions of the work of the uncategorisable Mark Latimer can read like hyperbole if you haven’t encountered the artist at work. But once you have, these plaudits and many others begin to sound like understatements instead. Mark Latimer is a keyboard artist of phenomenal technique, astonishing memory and he is one of the few musicians to have mastered classical music and jazz and who does not short change one or the other, this resolutely independent performer is carving out a special niche for himself in contemporary music. He rips into a furious soliloquy, a typical maelstrom of flying double-time, compacted ascending phrases as seamless as a wind instrument’s slur, jangling harmonic dissonances and in a typically Latimeresque makeover, John Coltrane’s famous Giant Steps (normally a harmonic obstacle course) opens with the familiar voicings displaced and the time signature altered to a challenging five. After plenty of years in limbo, Latimer may be entering the most comprehensively focused period of his musical life. This writer on hearing Latimer for the first time described him in The Guardian as ‘a fascinating outsider’. But it increasingly appears as if that marginalised status is about to end.

 

Jazz Journal International

This is a splendid CD of top class contemporary and post-bop piano - outstandingly good. Superb touch and feel from Latimer, great talent on display here. A moving performance - recommended with no reservations whatsoever! 

 

The Oxford Times

Different, adventurous and precarious, Mark Latimer created music with the mixture of veracity, adventure and risk that is common only among pioneers.

 

The Independent

Mark Latimer is the man who plays the Alkan Concerto for Solo Piano like a bat out of Hell - AND FROM MEMORY!  He plays his own jazz compositions and gives them excruciating titles. He has a doleful sense of humour and looks like a gangster and on Thurday he played another romantic blockbuster. He is  a distinctly untamed spirit. Formidably gifted, he relaxed into Busoni's massive arrangement with a big, sonorous, sumptuous tone that seemed to cost him little effort, and unfolded its elaborations almost casually, with a confident sense of romantic grandeur. 

 

Piano International

Whilst Laurent Martin doesn't have quite the technique to do the music full justice, Mark Latimer has it to burn. Even though Martin doesn't quite reach the heights, his playing is never less than accomplished and often more than that.  Latimer's big-dipper performance of the preternatural, massive Concerto for Solo Piano is very different. It's a display of phenomenal pianism that frequently beggars belief; he copes so easily with Alkan's outlandish demands that he has room for expression aplenty, even in the passages where your ears tax your imagination. Latimer  swallows everything Alkan can possibly throw at him and smiles still! The trouble is that  he does everything at such incredible speeds that he can come crashing off the road at the bends! This recording was made live -  no one could deny that this is a staggering achievement. So here you have an Alkan Concerto for solo Piano which is not for beginners - but at which the initiated will shake their heads in marvelling disbelief. An improbably virtuosic Islamey comes as the icing on this blistering cake.

 

Abeille Musique - Paris

For such a monumental work as the Concerto for Solo Piano, whose first movement alone takes almost half an hour, a studio recording  would be extremely likely to give an incoherent, antiseptic and unintelligible result.  Mark Latimer therefore decided to make this recording at a live public performance. Moreover, when one has at one’s disposal such a technique as his, there is no need to make use of such artificial means. And for such a work  it is technique, not artifice  that is  necessary for, as everyone agrees, it  is quite simply unplayable, impossible, a true pianistic heresy. Actually, here there really is the impression of hearing  five or six pianists playing at the same time - to say nothing of the immense physical demands and tiredness!  One would almost forget  to mention that this is the  work of an impressive and dazzling genius. By its side, Balakirev's Islamey - which is well known as virtuoso piece of the most arch difficulty - sounds here in this context like twinkle, twinkle little star  after the  largest  etude by Liszt.

 

Chris Parker - The Times

Mark Latimer is as at home with fearsomely complex notated music - he recently recorded Alkan’s Concerto for Solo Piano, an hour-long piece whose difficulty is legendary - as with freely improvised and chord-sequence-based jazz. Such versatility has perhaps mitigated against his ready accpetance by both jazz and classical listeners, but Unhinged Take 2 (Spotlite SPJCD 573) should finally stifle any remaining doubts about his jazz credentials. Leading a superb band - multi reedsman Andy Panayi, guitarist John Etheridge, bassist Mario Castronari and drummer Asaf Sirkis - Latimer demonstrates not only a rare compositional gift that enables him to intersperse highly personalised takes on classical material such as Mahler’s ‘Fierlich und Gemmessen’ and Cimarosa’s ‘Sonata ma non tanto’ with pungent, punchy and witty originals, but also a flawless improvisational technique. His soloing, replete with perfectly executed double-time passages and dazzlingly fleet runs, is at once breathtakingly proficient and engagingly playful, but it is the sheer range and depth of his imagination that immediately impresses. Fellow soloists Etheridge - as famous for his Django Reinhardt-style playing as for his electric explorations fo Frank Zappa’s legacy - and Panayi, whose flute playing is as sure-footed as his bass clarinet and saxophone work, are strikingly versatile, but Latimer has brought unaccustomed respectability to the overused and somewhat devalued term “eclecticism” with his wholly natural-sounding playing on this wide-ranging but entirely uncontrived album.

 

 

Jazz Review Magazine

The first thing to grab you here is the pianist's touch.  It's featherlight, dancing on the keys like a mere shadow.  Then there is the crisp precision of the chords.  And finally, as the piano moves into improvising mode, we find that the ideas are startlingly original, full of roguish runs and shrewd variations.  Reading the liner notes we discover some kind of explanation: Latimer is, in fact, a classical pianist who was performing Rachmaninov with European orchestras as a teenager, and specialises in playing the most difficult and complex compositions. He teaches at the University of Wales.  But jazz was the music he heard first through his father's collection of 78s and he is absolutely at home in the idiom.

The two sessions caught on this fine CD are basically of piano trios, with the other intruments only lightly involved.  An as example, the theme Softly is introduced on the guitar, after which Latimer takes off for some bop-inspired discoveries, hanging tastily behind the beat with a rubato feel, lifted by Mick Hutton's warm-toned bass.  Then Hanson re-enters with a gently teasing solo before the close.  Andy Panayi's mildly husky tone and swift articulation on tenor fits well in this keyboard company.  His flute playing on a single piece, Kenny Barron's Feijada has a haunting quality with occasional chirpy flurries as he jousts with Latimer's judicious chordal work.  "Ode to Life" opens as a reflective tone-poem for piano bass and brushes, a piece of such delicacy that you find yourself holding your breath.  Again, Latimer's playing is packed with surprise goodies.  This is a man who could easily give up the day job.

 

 

Short Biography

"Critics' opinions of the phenomenal, unclassifiable Mark Latimer may sound like hyperbole until you encounter the artist at work at which time they sound like understatements instead. This resolutely independent performer - an artistic powerhouse - is creating his own special niche in contemporary music" - John Fordham, The Guardian. Historically there is immeasurably less than a handful of musicians who are equally and genuinely adept in both the improvised jazz and classical music spheres.  "A great many talk, a very few dabble but Latimer actually DOES".; consequently and unequivocally he is one of the most unparallelled, influential and remarkable. Equally at home in Stockhausen as the Stereophonics, Cage as Coldplay, the Hammerklavier Sonata as the Hammersmith Palais and dubbed "the Renaissance man of music" by his record company, Warner Classics and Jazz, Mark Latimer leads a multi-layered existence as a  'piano-auteur-animateur' operating on multi-faceted levels, on the one hand composing, performing his own skeletally notated cutting-edge free improvised jazz, on the other a colossal repertoire of concertos, major classical cycles, and in particular non-mainstream and contemporary works, all of which is demonstrated by his new signing to Warner.  His immense, all embracing 'classical' repertoire, ranging from the earliest keyboard works eg. the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book to various premieres of works by  Honegger, Lambert, Schumann, Sorabji etc., as well as in excess of 100 first performances of numerous living composers including the recent premieres of leading contemporary Italian composer Ada Gentile's demanding complete solo works in China and the National Gallery London. Concerto engagements have included rarities by Alan Bush, Busoni (opus 39), Corigliano, Piet Ketting, Rawsthorne,  Reger, Scheinkman and so on, have played alongside his free improvised, cutting-edge organic compositions, including his recent suite Exhibitionist at the Pictures performed  as part of a recent  tour uniquely alongside the Alkan Concerto for Solo Piano (astonishingly, his first South Bank perfomance in the early 1980's  was only the second time this formidable work was played complete in London). Jazz and classical appearances have taken him to  international festivals in the UK, Europe and USA, including international jazz festivals in Birmingham, Brecon, Cheltenham (first artist-in-residence 1997), the first Euroart Festival - London, Modal Contemporary Music Festival, Montreux, Newport  R.I, OktoberFest BAC, London, Soho, Trondheim Norway; Holland, France, RSA, Russia, USA, throughout Britain, Classical Festivals including Edinburgh, Cheltenham, Chichester, Hangzhou, Manchester, Newbury, Norwich, Nuovi Spazi Musicali Italy Rome, Salisbury, Shanghai, Sydmonton, Three Choirs, West Lake International Festival China, Windsor International Festivals, and most major platforms such as St. John's Smith Square London, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Royal Festival Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Royal Opera House, 100 club, Blue Note Japan, Pizza Express, Ronnie Scott's et al.. Major compostion commissions have been obtained from the BBC (new jazz works during 2000/2001) and The Arts Council (most recently a major choral and string work given its Festival premiere in June 2001) and his sixth string quartet for The Aurora Quartet. Innumerable collaborations, again uniquely covering an encyclopaedic range, have included working with  astonishingly diverse artists from Joe Daniels, the Sandy Brown band  and The Christie Brothers to Larry Adler, Renato d'Aiello, Guy Barker, Dale Barlow, Ray Brown, Benny Carter, Paul Clarvis, George Coleman,  Gary Crosby, John Dankworth, John Etheridge, Catrin Finch, Slim Gaillard, Tim Garland, Stan Getz, Danny Moss, Warren Vache, Don Weller ; Ahronovitch, Atzmon, Boult, Celibidache, Del Mar, Gibson, Groves, Tausky, Vasary; members of the Amadeus, Arriaga and Brodsky Quartets, the Marlboro Wind Ensemble,  Campoli, Civil, Elizabeth Harwood, Julian Lloyd Webber, Tortelier, John Williams to name only a few: trio formats with cutting edge improvising musicians such as long standing associates and kindred souls Mario Castronari and Asaf Sirkis as well as in electro-experimentational live concert settings with Marcio Mattos and Tony Marsh, young cutting edge Grammy award winning Scandinavians Haakon Johanson and Steinar Raknes  and in the Far East with New Yorkers Damien Banzigou and Ronnie Williams et.al. Another first for Latimer, and St. John's Smith Square, was his concert of improvised music there. Furthermore, he is one of the very few to occupy that exceptionally rare jazz upper echelon as NOT being known as a 'sideman'.Other fields of the arts have benefitted from his expertise, with musical direction for a number of productions including those of Andrew Lloyd Webber and his coaching, composing, session and accompaniment work having brought him into contact with major figures from the worlds of the avant garde, ballet, choreography, contemporary dance, electroacoustic and experimental music, film - mainstream and independent, pop, rock and  theatre - fringe, legitimate, musical.  The large and virtually unparalleled discography of "this renaissance man of music" includes a considerable number of live multiform jazz CDs including  the ground breaking solo real-time site-specific Zeitgeist CD on Munitions Factory. Classical highlights include the first ever live recording of notoriously "the most difficult work ever written", The Concerto for Solo Piano by Alkan on APR - APR 5600 - and his 'trail-blazing' CD, his first release for Warner -  Warner Classics 2564 61718-2 - of both the Max Reger cerebral, monumental and colossally demanding sets of piano variations and fugues - on themes by Telemann and Bach (Classic FM's instrumental CD of the month 02.05) - the latter work also performed on tour 2000/2001 with world premieres of new jazz commissions including der rosenKlavier.  Also, he has recorded many works by composers ranging from Albeniz to Xennakis and also organ compositions from Bach and Buxtehude to Charpentier and Messaien. The latest in an on-going series  of 'Take' albums for Spotlite  Records was released in December 2002, as well as a charity CD  which he recorded with the current Archbishop of Canterbury. Numerous broadcasts, a great many of them live and a great many of them premieres, have been undertaken on BBC radio including arguably the first ever contrapuntal improvised jazz work  on the resident four-manual pipe organ in the Concert Hall BBC Broadcasting House London  (his composition Twelve Tone Altercation), which was part of a live concert broadcast from there on BBC Radio 3.  Diverse BBC television performances include Rachmaninov and Britten songs with Sarah Brightman and a Royal Concert with Wayne Sleep.  His international broadcasts have taken place in many countries including France, Holland, Italy, South Africa and the USA.  His 'belief defying range' is demonstrated by his most recent live BBC radio 3 broadcasts which encompassed impromptu duos with artists as diverse as Alan Barnes and Julian Joseph and took in, uniquely Steve Reich, wild free-improv and indie band E.M.F. on the first; duets with Jim Mullen and Claire Martin and an arrangement of The Prodigy's 'Smack my Bitch up' - a typically bizarre first for BBC Radio 3 - on the second. Latimer's current multi-media projects include a unique collaboration with BAFTA award-winning film animators Cinetig for which he recieved an enormous Arts Council award, weaving a truly original web of free improvised contemporary jazz (from solo to large ensembles) with sand and ink film animations and various other multi-media interactive shows and productions including his new cutting edge chamber ensemble Camera Obscura and the improvised music and dance concept Terpsichorus - premiered by Battersea Arts Centre prestigious OktoberFest, as well as his duo project with Julian Joseph which has opened many prestigious festivals and series. Touring musical theatre workshops are also being planned for the UK, Europe and Far East.  Ancillary projects include the completion of Max Reger's biography as well as continued contributions to important conferences, symposia, journals etc. Interactive art installations including collaborations with Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, an improvised dance/music piece at the Place's Resolutions Festival and a Brecht collaborations with British theatre's doyenne Annie Castledine.  With such extensive academic and practical knowledge of The Arts (film, music and contemporary dance), his commitment to driving these art forms forward and making all forms of contemporary music more accessible can be seen by his numerous workshop, masterclass and pedagogic activities, running mostly independently but also within an institutional context having either tutored or held positions at major music colleges and conservatoires in the UK (including professorship at the London College of Music at age 18), major specialised educational establishments in the country (including The Arts Education School in London and the new music initiative at the London Academy of Film), universities including the University of Wales and University of Hangzhou, China as well as a brief contemporary artist-in-residence at The Royal College of Music, Wales  and recent film collaborations as music director including the Anglo-American award winning movie "Music from a Farther Room'.