Free Afternoon Recital - Paul Taylor

About

Our series of free afternoon recitals continues with a special performance by pianist Paul Taylor.

While entry to our concerts is complimentary, we encourage contributions during the collection at the end of each performance to support both the talented artists and the Cathedral. Your generosity will help us continue to bring such events to the community. We look forward to seeing you there!

About Paul:

Paul Taylor is an accomplished pianist and keyboard player specialising in improvisation. The music is evocative, alluring and unique; combining unusual harmonies and sonorities with an original and fluid technique. In recent years, he has emerged as one of the most consistently interesting and innovative solo pianists, eschewing the conventional cliches associated with jazz improvisation in favour of an unorthodox, harmonically complex and often compellingly beautiful musical language that is often inspired by the classical tradition. Nonetheless, his playing also encapsulates the restless capacity for invention that is a cornerstone of jazz.

Paul has performed at festivals in Romania and Slovenia, and specialises in playing in unusual and atmospheric settings, such as Victoria Tunnel in Newcastle's Ouseburn, St. John's Church in Glastonbury and Durham Castle.

His music is available on Bandcamp:
https://paulstephentaylor.bandcamp.com/

"Brilliant": Stuart Maconie, BBC Radio 6 "Freak Zone".

"A rare phenomenon": International Piano Magazine.

"Those hands delineate a high-yielding path inside the secret rooms of a harmony that draws colours and nuances from romantic pasts, transcendental visions, defined yet shifting tonalities...an instrumentalist whose inner depth and speed of translation from intuition to creative act appear to be in direct proportion":
Massimo Ricci, "Touching Extremes" blog, February 2021.

"A very assured work indeed": Jazzwise magazine, review of Paul's 2021 album, "Via".

"A series of harmonically and melodically rich, compelling improvisations": London Jazz News, February 2021.

"A solo improviser of outstanding scope and originality", "...his solo excursions on piano proceed with an unpredictable but constantly gripping logic that often feels as close to the richly lyrical and harmonic approach of Romantic period classical composers as it does to jazz": Paul Bream's Jazz Alert.

"Now firmly established as the most original improvising pianist in the North East"
"It's incredible that Taylor can create such a full and immense sound and feeling with only solo piano":
Jazz North East

"Gorgeous": The Guardian

"A Chopin of the contemporary art music era": Neil March, Exile FM