John Pearce and David Newton live at Steam Bristol on 17th May 2018
Live music at Steam Bristol continues on Thursday 17th May 2018 with John Pearce and David Newton live from 8pm with free entry.
JOHN PEARCE
Born in Bristol, John Pearce began learning the violin at the age of seven and has since performed in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Japan as well as at venues in London including the Royal Albert Hall, St. Martin in the Fields and St. John's, Smith Square.
He has performed live as a soloist on BBC radio and television and has given world premieres of works by composers such as Sir Richard Rodney Bennett. He regularly appears as a soloist, most recently performing the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Stroud Symphony Orchestra and gives duo recitals with pianist and composer Motoki Hirai. Festival performances have included the Cheltenham Music Festival, the Bath Festival and the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival.
John had the honour of receiving an award from the Former Parliamentary under Secretary of State for an outstanding contribution to music and was awarded a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music where he studied with Gyorgy Pauk, later continuing his studies privately with Bela Katona.
He was also part of the Live Music Now scheme that was developed by Yehudi Menuhin as a musical outreach organisation and John continues to give masterclasses and music workshops throughout the country.
DAVID NEWTON
Growing up in Renfrewshire, Scotland, Newton had a musical upbringing with the piano trio sound of Peterson, Tatum or Garner an ever-present feature in the Newton household. After graduating from Leeds College of Music in 1979 David Newton freelanced around Yorkshire and eventually became a resident musician at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough for two and a half years. A move to Edinburgh followed where theatre work using local musicians quickly led to an established position on the Scottish jazz scene but after some four years there, his old roommate from college, Alan Barnes, persuaded him to move to London where he rapidly became a much sought after pianist teaming up with Barnes, guitarist Martin Taylor and saxophonist Don Weller.
Newton's recording career had begun in 1985 with Buddy De Franco and Martin Taylor and his first solo album was released in '88 in association with producer Elliot Meadow who oversaw the next nine years of recording for Linn Records followed by Candid Records. Once again, in 1997, David Newton and Alan Barnes teamed up and together with Concorde Label agent Barry Hatcher, made four CDs for that label. By 2003, Newton had learned a great deal of the ways a record company operated and he set up a business partnership with former pupil Mike Daymond and they established "Brightnewday Records" initially as a vehicle for Newton's own music but with an eye to opening up the catalogue to other artists later on.
In the first five years of the nineties, Newton's reputation as an exquisite accompanist for a singer, spread rather rapidly and by '95 he was regularly working with Carol Kidd, Marion Montgomery, Tina May, Annie Ross, Claire Martin and of course Stacey Kent, with whom he spent the next ten years recording and travelling all over the world. While all this was going on, Newton was composing music which he would record on his own CDs as well as writing specifically for Martin Taylor, Alan Barnes, Tina May or Claire Martin and Newton's music can now be heard on many television productions, especially in the United States where over twenty TV movies benefit from Newton's haunting themes. In 2003, after a twenty year gap, David Newton was reunited with playwright Alan Aykbourn having been involved with eight world premiers in Scarborough and London back in the early eighties, and he was asked to write the music for two new productions, 'Sugar Daddies' and 'Drowning on Dry Land'. Currently, with the release of a new CD called "Portrait of a Woman", on the 'Brightnewday' label, David Newton is relishing the musical freedom of his Trio and the special sound it makes whilst working on two other new recording projects, as an arranger and a composer.
David Newton has been voted best Jazz Pianist in the British Jazz awards for the thirteenth time in 2014 and was made a Fellow of Leeds College of Music in 2003.
The music starts at 8pm prompt, and entry is free as always but please give to the hat.