Matthew Bourne (born 6 October 1977) is an English multi-instrumentalist, primarily working with piano and keyboards.

Childhood and education

Bourne was born in

Avebury Avebury () is a Neolithic henge monument containing three stone circles, around the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, in south-west England. One of the best-known prehistoric sites in Britain, it contains the largest megalithic stone circle in ...

, England, and grew up in a small village situated in the

Cotswolds The Cotswolds ( ) is a region of central South West England, along a range of rolling hills that rise from the meadows of the upper River Thames to an escarpment above the Severn Valley and the Vale of Evesham. The area is defined by the bedroc ...

, where he took up the

trombone The trombone (, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's lips vibrate inside a mouthpiece, causing the Standing wave, air c ...

aged nine. In 1989, Bourne attended Kingham Hill School and began playing

cello The violoncello ( , ), commonly abbreviated as cello ( ), is a middle pitched bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), tuned i ...

the following year. After seeing

Frank Sinatra Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Honorific nicknames in popular music, Nicknamed the "Chairman of the Board" and "Ol' Blue Eyes", he is regarded as one of the Time 100: The Most I ...

play on television in 1993, Bourne began to teach himself the piano.Biography
at matthewbourne.com Bourne enrolled at

Leeds College of Music Leeds Conservatoire (formerly known as The Leeds Music Centre, the City of Leeds College of Music, and Leeds College of Music) is a higher education music conservatoire based in the Quarry Hill district of Leeds, England. It was founded in 19 ...

in 1995 where he began to explore contemporary classical composition and

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

. During his time at the college, he performed Michael Daugherty's piano concerto "Tombeau de Liberace" and John Cage's "Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra". In 2001, Bourne graduated from the MMus jazz studies course.Alumni and Fellowships
Leeds College of Music Bourne has subsequently taught as a part-time lecturer at Leeds College of Music and has a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in performance from the

University of Leeds The University of Leeds is a public research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was established in 1874 as the Yorkshire College of Science. In 1884, it merged with the Leeds School of Medicine (established 1831) and was renamed Y ...

Career

Bourne's success began in 2001 when he was named the Perrier Young Jazz Musician of the Year. His success continued the following year when he was awarded the prize for Jazz Innovation at the BBC Radio Jazz Awards. In this period, Bourne was profiled in ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper. In 1993 it was acquired by Guardian Media Group Limited, and operated as a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' ...

Music Monthly'' as "the future sound of jazz". In 2005, he won the International Jazz Festivals Organisation International Jazz Award. His first solo album, ''The Molde Concert'', was recorded live at the

Molde International Jazz Festival Molde International Jazz Festival (MIJF) or Moldejazz (established 1961 in Molde Municipality) takes place annually in July, and is known as one of the oldest jazz festivals in Europe. It was initiated by the local Storyville Jazz Club. Since 19 ...

and received positive reviews. This performance showcased Bourne's inventive use of samples (including audio clips from ''

The Simpsons ''The Simpsons'' is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening, James L. Brooks and Sam Simon for the Fox Broadcasting Company. It is a Satire (film and television), satirical depiction of American life ...

'' and other TV shows) as well as his "cyclonic energy and virtuosity" and "ramblingly self-deprecating and sometimes off-mic announcements". By this stage, Bourne had also become co-leader of The Electric Dr M, Distortion Trio and

Bourne/Davis/Kane Bourne/Davis/Kane is a trio of musicians who perform free improvisation. The trio consists of: *Matthew Bourne – piano *Steve Davis – drums *Dave Kane – double bass Bourne/Davis/Kane have released one recording ''Lost Something'', available ...

, and was beginning to work in a wider context, leading to notable collaborations with artists and groups such as Nostalgia 77,

Marc Ribot Marc Ribot (; born May 21, 1954) is an American guitarist and composer. His work has touched on many styles, including no wave, free jazz, Rock music, rock, and Cuban music. Ribot is also known for collaborating with other musicians, most notab ...

Paul Dunmall Paul Dunmall (born 6 May 1953) is a British jazz musician who plays tenor and soprano saxophone, as well as the baritone and the more exotic saxello and the Northumbrian smallpipes. He has played with Keith Tippett and Barry Guy. In the earl ...

Annette Peacock Annette Peacock (born 1941) is an American composer, musician, songwriter, producer, and arranger. She is a pioneer in electronic music who combined her voice with one of the first Moog synthesizers in the late 1960s. Biography Annette Peacock ...

John Zorn John Zorn (born September 2, 1953) is an American composer, conducting, conductor, saxophonist, arrangement, arranger and record producer, producer who "deliberately resists category". His Avant-garde music, avant-garde and experimental music, ex ...

Pete Wareham Pete Wareham is a British saxophonist, composer and band leader. He led the genre-defying North African/punk/jazz/dance band Melt Yourself Down and was a member of Nadine Shah’s Mercury Prize-nominated band, Seb Rochford’s Pulled By Magnets ...

Barre Phillips Barre Phillips (October 27, 1934 – December 28, 2024) was an American jazz double bass, bassist. A professional musician since 1960, he moved to New York City in 1962, then to Europe in 1967. From 1972 he was based in southern France, where in ...

and

Tony Bevan Tony Bevan (born 1951) is a British painter, known for his psychologically charged images of people at the edge of respectable society. Biography Bevan was born in Bradford, Yorkshire. He studied at Bradford School of Art from 1968 to 1971, fol ...

. Bourne has been commissioned to write works for

Bath International Music Festival The Bath International Music Festival was held late each spring in Bath, South West England between 1948 and 2016. The festival included many genres such as Jazz, Classical, World and Folk and merged with the Bath Literature Festival in 2017 to c ...

London Jazz Festival The London Jazz Festival is a music festival held every November. It takes place in London venues such as the Barbican and the Royal Festival Hall and in smaller jazz clubs, such as Ronnie Scott's and the Vortex Jazz Club. It is produced by Se ...

, Leeds Fuse Festival as well as from the pianist

Joanna MacGregor Joanna Clare MacGregor (born 16 July 1959) is a British concert pianist, conductor, composer, and festival curator. She is Head of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music and a professor of the University of London. She was artistic director of t ...

and

Faber Music Faber Music is a British sheet music publisher best known for contemporary classical music. It also publishes music tutor books, and in 2005 acquired popular music publisher International Music Publications. Faber Music has close relations with ...

. Bourne's work has been broadcast on various BBC radio and television programmes. In 2012 Bourne released '' Montauk Variations'' on

The Leaf Label The Leaf Label is a British independent record label based in Yorkshire, England. Initially an electronic music label, releasing mainly instrumental music, the company's approach now features artists spanning jazz and post-punk. History The Le ...

. The album began a long and fruitful relationship with the label and was awarded the Leftfield Album of the Year award by the ''

Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British Sunday newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of N ...

''. Its "lyrical and romantic" mood marked a change in musical direction from the

tone of his earlier work. ''Montauk Variations'' caught the attention of

Amon Tobin Amon Adonai Santos de Araújo Tobin (; born February 7, 1972) is a Brazilian electronic musician, composer and producer. He is noted for his unusual methodology in sound design and music production. He has released eight major studio albums unde ...

and

Nancy Elizabeth ''Nancy Elizabeth Cunliffe'' is an English folk singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who releases music with The Leaf Label. She is an active member of Sōka Gakkai. History Early years Nancy was born in Billinge Higher End, near Wigan ...

, both of whom invited Bourne to rework their material, and Simon Green of

Bonobo The bonobo (; ''Pan paniscus''), also historically called the pygmy chimpanzee (less often the dwarf chimpanzee or gracile chimpanzee), is an endangered great ape and one of the two species making up the genus ''Pan (genus), Pan'' (the other bei ...

selected the composition "Juliet" for inclusion in his release of the ''

Late Night Tales ''Late Night Tales'' and its predecessor ''Another Late Night'' are the names of two related series of artist-curated compilation albums released by Azuli Records in the UK until 2009 when the independent record label Night Time Stories took ...

'' compilation series. In 2015, Bourne embarked on a UK tour with an audio/visual project entitled ''Radioland''. This was a collaboration with

Antoine Schmitt Antoine Schmitt (born 1961 in Strasbourg) is a France, French visual artist and Programmer, programming engineer who revolves in the fields of digital art and Digital product design, digital design, especially in the field of the Internet of t ...

and

Franck Vigroux Franck Vigroux is a French musician, composer and media artist. Background Vigroux's artistic approach integrates new media and performing arts. He is a multifaceted artist whose music works range from electro-acoustic and experimental electroni ...

to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the release of ''

Radio-Activity ''Radio-Activity'' (German title: ''Radio-Aktivität'') is the fifth studio album by German electronic music band Kraftwerk, released in November 1975. The band's first entirely electronic album is also a concept album organized around the them ...

'' by

Kraftwerk Kraftwerk (, ) is a Germany, German Electronic music, electronic band formed in Düsseldorf in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. Widely considered innovators and pioneers of electronic music, Kraftwerk was among the first successful a ...

. The Anglo-French trio "take the album’s melodies and textures as the starting point for avant-garde explorations" that saw Bourne performing on a variety of analogue

synthesisers A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

as well as singing in

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

through a

vocoder A vocoder (, a portmanteau of ''vo''ice and en''coder'') is a category of speech coding that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption or voice transformation. The vocoder wa ...

. An album of this music, entitled '' Radioland: Radio-Activity Revisited'', was released digitally on

in December, with physical copies available in January 2016. Bourne's second solo album, ''

moogmemory ''moogmemory'' is the second solo studio album by English improvising piano, pianist and synthesizer, synthesiser player Matthew Bourne (musician), Matthew Bourne. His first studio album, ''Montauk Variations'', was a series of compositions for s ...

'', was released on The Leaf Label on 4 March 2016. This is the only album ever recorded with only the Lintronics Advanced Memorymoog, a

Memorymoog The Memorymoog is a polyphonic electronic music synthesizer manufactured by Moog Music from 1982 to 1985, the last polyphonic synthesizer to be released by Moog Music before the company declared bankruptcy in 1987. While comparable to other polyph ...

synthesiser converted by Rudi Linhard in a process which is the "equivalent of open heart surgery" replacing "1,300 components over eight weeks". A companion EP entitled ''moogmemory plus'' was released in November 2016. The first three tracks were composed during the process of creating ''moogmemory'', but the release also includes new material and a cover version of "Sussudio" by

Phil Collins Philip David Charles Collins (born 30 January 1951) is an English musician, songwriter, record producer and actor. He was the drummer and later became the lead singer of the rock band Genesis (band), Genesis and had a successful solo career, ac ...

. Bourne returned to the piano for 2017's ''Isotach''. The music was recorded over an 18-month period at Bourne's home in West Yorkshire, mostly captured in snatched moments between soundtrack scores and session work.

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

described the record as "spartan, hypnotic and beautiful, if gloriously unresolved" and stated that Bourne was playing "as if...thrilled by the sound of a piano". In 2018 Matthew Bourne was featured on the album ''Nightports w/ Matthew Bourne'' by Nightports. Material for the album was recorded over three sessions in two locations. First at Matthew Bourne's house near Keighley, West Yorkshire in March 2015. The second and third sessions took place at Besbrode Pianos in

Leeds Leeds is a city in West Yorkshire, England. It is the largest settlement in Yorkshire and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds Metropolitan Borough, which is the second most populous district in the United Kingdom. It is built aro ...

in October 2015 and June 2016. Material from ''Nightports w/ Matthew Bourne'' was premiered on three pianos with live manipulations at Middleton Hall as part of the Hull City Of Culture programme. Bourne collaborated with Leaf Label partner

Keeley Forsyth Keeley Forsyth is an English actress and musician. She has released the albums ''Debris Debris (, ) is rubble, wreckage, ruins, litter and discarded waste, garbage/refuse/trash, scattered remains of something destroyed, or, as in geology, l ...

on her 2020 album ''Debris'' and EP ''Photograph'', as well as releasing an EP of remixes of music from his ''moogmemory plus'' EP featuring Graham Massey, Sam Hobbs, Nostalgia 77, Broadway Project, Chris Sharkey, and Rex Rebo. This was made available as a

Bandcamp Bandcamp is an American online music distribution platform founded in 2008 by Oddpost co-founder Ethan Diamond and programmers Shawn Grunberger, Joe Holt and Neal Tucker, with an office and record store in Oakland, California. Acquired by Epic ...

exclusive.

Discography

Collaborations *''The Electric Dr M'' (with The Electric Dr M) (2004) *''Lost Something'' (with

) (2008) *''Dismantling The Waterfall'' (with Dave Stapleton) (2008) *''Call Me Madame (Good News From Nowhere)'' (with

) (2009) *''Moment To Moment'' (with

Dave Kane David Kane (born January 26, 1948) is an American radio talk show host, comedian, performance artist, and author. Kane was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island and currently still makes his home in the Ocean State. Nicknamed "The Pitbull of comedy" ...

, Steve Davis and

) (2009) *''The Money Notes'' (with

) (2010) *''Chansons D'amour'' (with Laurent Dehors) (2012) *''Mandalas In The Sky'' (with Dave Kane, Steve Davis and Paul Dunmall) (2015) *'' Radioland: Radio-Activity Revisited'' (with

) (2015) *''The Earthworm's Eye View'' (with Tipping Point) (2015) *''Nightports w/Matthew Bourne'' (2018) (with Nightports) *''Chimet'' (2024) (with MINING) *''Dulcitone 1804'' (2024) (with Nightports) As a solo artist *''The Molde Concert'' (2005) *'' Montauk Variations'' (2012) *''

'' (2016) *''moogmemory plus'' (EP, 2016) *''Isotach'' (2017) *''For Basil Kirchin'' (Digital, 2017) *''Irrealis'' (2022) *''This Is Not For You.'' (2024)

Awards

* Perrier Young Jazz Award, Musician Category, 2001 * BBC Radio Jazz Awards, Innovation Award, 2002 * International Jazz Festivals Organization International Jazz Award, 2005 * Braaid Eisteddfod, Overseas Award, Instrumental Competition, 2007 * International Visual Communications Association Bronze Award for Music (shared with Dan Berridge), 2007

References

External links

Matthew Bourne official website

Matthew Bourne on Bandcamp

"Matthew Bourne, The Electric Dr M"
''BBC Music''
"Matthew Bourne Trio"
''BBC - Coventry and Warwickshire Music''

''The Guardian''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bourne, Matthew 1977 births Living people English jazz pianists English jazz bandleaders English composers People educated at Kingham Hill School Alumni of Leeds Conservatoire Alumni of the University of Leeds