Bill Laurance & The Untold Orchestra - Bloom | Bill Laurance & The Untold Orchestra

Bill Laurance & The Untold Orchestra - Bloom

by Bill Laurance & The Untold Orchestra

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Sam Tweaks Oh my the two tracks I have heard so far are stunning!

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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Includes digital pre-order of Bill Laurance & The Untold Orchestra - Bloom. You get 1 track now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.

shipping out on or around April 26, 2024

£16 GBP or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Includes digital pre-order of Bill Laurance & The Untold Orchestra - Bloom. You get 1 track now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.

shipping out on or around April 26, 2024

£25 GBP or more

	1.	Bloom 06:23
	2.	Before the Sun
	3.	All at Once
	4.	Right Where We Are
	5.	Strange Love
	6.	Shots
	7.	Above All
	8.	Lyra
	9.	The Right Time

about

Bloom, the ACT debut of pianist and composer Bill Laurance as leader, marks the transition from the smallest possible form of musical interaction to a large-scale, broadband format: Following the internationally acclaimed ACT release Where You Wish You Were in duo with multi-instrumentalist and Snarky Puppy bandmate Michael League, Laurance now teams up with Manchester-based 18-piece string orchestra The Untold Orchestra and creates a work of convincingly epic pro-portions. Combining Bill Laurance’s classical sensibilities with jazz, pop grooves, and powerful orchestral synchronicity, Bloom runs the gamut of emotions and moods.
“The starting point of my musical career is my classical piano training” says Laurance “and this album is certainly the most classic sounding one I've ever made.” The eponymous opening track of the album impressively demonstrates how organically and naturally, Laurance manages the balancing act between an orchestral sound, the accessibility and groove of pop music and the freedom of jazz: a series of dark, warm string chords introduces a sense of spaciousness and sonic depth.
Soon after, an intense rhythm develops, simultaneously light and tightly grooving. A crystalline piano melody develops over everything, leading into an imaginative, hypnotically intensifying improvisation. The earliest idea for Bloom was to create music of strong rhythmic intensity, achieved without drums or percussion and in a more classical setting. And after a period of experimenting with the dynamics of a string section to drive the pulse, Laurance got to work composing from his London studio base.
The Untold Orchestra proves to be the perfect partner in this endeavour: The ensemble, which was only founded in 2019, focuses on collaborations with musicians from a wide variety of genres. And on Bloom, it performs with the tightness and sonic density of modern pop music and the sensitivity and subtlety of classical musicians in equal measure. Together with this extraordinary ensemble and in arrangements by Joshua Poole, Bill Laurance's compositions evoke associations with Italian Baroque, Vivaldi, Shostakovic and Philip Glass.
Conceptually, Laurance says the record was largely inspired by his child’s capacity to imagine and create other worlds: “Every decision we act upon can be traced back to our capacity to imagine, and the limits of what we can achieve are restricted only by our ability to dream, as such. My child’s ability to pull back the curtain of reality and create a fantasy world ignited possibilities of my own, and with Bloom I seek to transport the listener to those places, inspired throughout by the power of the natural world and our ever-growing dependence on it.”
Featuring his widely lauded improvisational skills, Laurance perfects the balance of straddling virtuosity without becoming self-indulgent. His playing transcends mere technical mastery on the piano, instead weaving these techniques into something that captivates the listener, no matter what music they usually feel at home with. It respects the full instrumentation of his compositions, creating breathing space for each musician to be heard and understood. And so, Bloom ties in with its predecessor album Where You Wish You Were, albeit with completely different means: With its vocal and narrative quality, this music creates spaces and dream worlds in which listeners can lose themselves with joy.

credits

releases April 26, 2024

Recorded at Blueprint Studios, Manchester on the 21st, 22nd & 23rd of September 2022.

MUSICIANS
Bill Laurance - Piano, Fender Rhodes Mk8, Osmose Expressive, Prophet 6.
Rory Storm - Conductor

Violin 1
Simmy Singh
Katie Foster
Cleo Annandale
Mateus Dandalo

Violin 2
Didier Osindero
Helena Logah
Eleanor Shute
Chloe Hayward

Viola
Rosamund Hawkins
Sophia Dignam
Nadia Eskandari
Emily Davies

Cello
Polly Virr
Awen Blandford
Reyan Murtadha
Lucy McLuckie

Double Bass
Marcus Vinicius
Alice Phelps

SOUND
Steve Poppleton - Engineer / Mix Engineer
Gary Hadfield - Engineer
James Paul - Assistant Engineer
Tim Thomas & Ian Stewart - Co-owners, Blueprint Studios
Dave McNair - Mastering

VIDEO
Kai Ohio - Video Director
Ashley Stokes - Camera Operator
Axel Wolstenholme - Camera Operator/Photographer

PRODUCTION
Sam Davies - Untold Orchestra CEO

Bill Laurance & The Untold Orchestra - BLOOM
All tracks composed by Bill Laurance
All tracks arranged by Bill Laurance and Joshua Poole
Produced by Bill Laurance & The Untold Orchestra

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about

Bill Laurance London, UK

GRAMMY award-winning pianist, composer and original member of Snarky Puppy. Founder of the Flint Music label. Endorsed by Yamaha, Mellotron, Dave Smith, Moog, Korg, Native Instruments, Roland, ROLI, Nord, Arp, Audio Technica, MXR, and Expressive E.

shows

Nov 4

Erholungshaus Leverkusen

Leverkusen, Germany

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