Kit Downes

Kit Downes

Kit Downes is a jazz pianist from Norwich, United Kingdom, born in 1986. He studies at the Purcell School of Music and the Royal Academy of Music, and becomes active in a range of British jazz and improvising groups.

Career and collaborations

He plays regularly with his own trio, as well as with Stan Sulzman, Troyka, The Golden Age of Steam, Sam Crockatt and Clark Tracey. He also performs with Joe Locke, Gilad Atzmon, Empirical, Gerard Presencer, Seb Rochford, Ian Ballamy, Peter Ind, Gwyneth Herbert, John Warren and Eugene Skeef. Other groups he works with include Fraud, Asaf Sirkis’ Inner Noise, Gilad Atzmon’s Orient House Ensemble, Acoustic Ladyland, Nostalgia 77, 2000 Black, Silhouette Brown and Dennis Rollins’ Badbone and Co.

Recording and festival work

Downes also works with Micachu, recording at Abbey Road for Matthew Herbert, appearing on BBC Radio 6 and performing at the Sonar Music Festival in Barcelona in 2007. His work with Empirical takes him to the North Sea Jazz Festival, the JVC Festivals in New York, Montreal and Newport, and the Vancouver Jazz Festival.

Kit Downes Trio

The Kit Downes Trio forms in his first year at the Royal Academy of Music and has played together since 2005. The line-up features Calum Gourlay on bass and James Maddren on drums. The trio focuses on the balance between improvisation and composition, drawing on a wide set of influences that includes Béla Bartók, Keith Jarrett and Rufus Wainwright. It also aims to keep the music accessible while maintaining complexity. The trio performs at the London Jazz Festival in 2008 and 2009, the Ronnie Scott’s British Jazz Festival, a BBC Radio 3 live broadcast, the Glasgow Jazz Festival and the Cheltenham Jazz Festival. Its first album is released on Basho Records in November 2009.

Awards and groups

Empirical wins Best Album of the Year 2007 in Jazzwise and the EBU Award at the North Sea Festival. Downes wins the BBC Rising Star Award in 2008, is nominated for a British Jazz Award in 2008 and 2009, and receives a Yamaha Jazz Scholarship Award in 2009. He is also a member of the F-IRE Collective.