Django Bates
Django Bates was born (1960) in Beckenham, Kent in a street 'full of bank managers'. His parents grew cabbages in the front garden and filled the house with vagrant friends and their families: 'I don't think we fitted in' he concludes. Django credits the delight he takes in his music to the variety of musical influences from his childhood; his father being a collector of Romanian folk, African music, and Jazz. After various lessons on piano, violin and trumpet, Django found himself at the Royal College of music in London studying composition. On finding that the pianos had signs saying 'not to be used for playing Jazz' on them, he left two weeks later realising he wanted to remain a self-taught composer.
This year Django was the inaugural artistic director of Fuse Leeds04 - a biennial new music festival celebrating the wealth and diversity of today's vibrant music scene, for which he commissioned Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood to write a new work for Ondes Martnot and the London Sinfonietta. In honour of improvising saxophonist Evan Parker's 60th birthday, Django commissioned sixty composers including Gavin Bryars, Sir Patrick Moore and John Zorn, to write one bar each, and then he quilted these into the piece 'Premature Celebration' which was performed by The London Sinfonietta with Evan Parker and Paul Lytton. Django also composed 'Umpteenth Violin Concerto' for violinist Ernst Kovacic.
In June 04, Django began a recording project with Vince Mendosa and the Dutch Metropole Orchestra The long awaited second performance of his Piano Concerto What it is Like to be Alive was performed by Joanna MacGregor and the Duisburg Symphony Orchestra on the 26th June 2004 and his new album You Live and Learn…was released on the 28th June 2004 on the Lost Marble label receiving a rare 4 star review by The Observer and album of the week by the Guardian.
For more information visit www.djangobates.co.uk
Photo Credit: Nick White 2004
This year Django was the inaugural artistic director of Fuse Leeds04 - a biennial new music festival celebrating the wealth and diversity of today's vibrant music scene, for which he commissioned Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood to write a new work for Ondes Martnot and the London Sinfonietta. In honour of improvising saxophonist Evan Parker's 60th birthday, Django commissioned sixty composers including Gavin Bryars, Sir Patrick Moore and John Zorn, to write one bar each, and then he quilted these into the piece 'Premature Celebration' which was performed by The London Sinfonietta with Evan Parker and Paul Lytton. Django also composed 'Umpteenth Violin Concerto' for violinist Ernst Kovacic.
In June 04, Django began a recording project with Vince Mendosa and the Dutch Metropole Orchestra The long awaited second performance of his Piano Concerto What it is Like to be Alive was performed by Joanna MacGregor and the Duisburg Symphony Orchestra on the 26th June 2004 and his new album You Live and Learn…was released on the 28th June 2004 on the Lost Marble label receiving a rare 4 star review by The Observer and album of the week by the Guardian.
For more information visit www.djangobates.co.uk
Photo Credit: Nick White 2004
