Standard: £8
“Pete Judge is a Bristol music phenomenon” – BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction
Pete is a musician/composer based in Bristol UK, with a number of acclaimed performing/recording projects. He is the trumpeter with BBC Jazz Award winners Get The Blessing, ambient-jazz-minimalist duo Eyebrow, and acoustic duo JOW, and multi-instrumentalist with acoustic chamber-folk trio Three Cane Whale . His many session performances and recordings include This Is The Kit, Super Furry Animals, Noel Gallagher, Jim Moray, Jesca Hoop, and Aardman’s Oscar-nominated “Robin Robin”.
Composition work includes commissions for Travelling Light Theatre Company, Tobacco Factory Theatre, Shetland Arts Trust, Portland Royal Manor Theatre, Gloucester Royal Hospital, Aberystwyth Silver Band, and Michael Rosen’s BBC radio series Poetry Playtime.
In 2022, he releases his third volume of original solo piano pieces, all recorded at St George’s in Bristol on the venue’s magnificent Steinway grand, engineered by Tim Allen (Bat For Lashes), and mastered by Jim Barr (Portishead, Get The Blessing). All three releases feature artwork by award-winning environmental photographer Mike Perry.
“piano”, 2018, was featured on BBC Radio 3 and 6Music, and on the soundtrack of “A Short Film About Ice” (dir. Adam Laity, winner of the 2020 AHRC Research In Film ‘Best Climate Emergency Film’ ). Follow-up “piano 2”, 2020, was described by music writer Richard Williams as “the perfect music for the times we’re living through”, and chosen as one of The Guardian’s Best Albums Of 2020. “piano 3” completes this unexpected trilogy. Fourteen tracks take the listener on a journey through landscapes, habitats, and memories, with moments of stillness balanced by skeins of interlocking patterns. The music offers elegies for lost friends and vanishing places, with specific inspirations including a drawing by Hieronymous Bosch, the poetry of Edward Thomas, the life of composer Gerald Finzi, the borderlands between England and South Wales, and the uncanny sense that we are most definitely being watched by the natural world when we think that we’re the ones doing the watching.
Music from all three albums was performed at St George’s Bristol in February 2022 as part of Judge’s “piano + film” collaboration with audio-visual artist (and Ivor Novello and British Composer Award-winner) Kathy Hinde. “It’s not jazz, it’s not classical. It’s sturdy but also delicate. It’s melodic and austere at the same time. It’s inviting but not ingratiating. It takes its time. It’s satisfyingly well proportioned but not predictable. It’s quietly but firmly unsentimental. It’s just there, like a friend” – ‘piano 2’, Richard Williams (thebluemoment.com)
“Judge is a generous performer and an even more generous composer” – Musicweb International
“Will appeal to anyone who loves Satie, Michael Nyman, Cornelius Cardew, any intimate contemplative piano music” – Sarah Walker (BBC Radio 3’s Sunday Morning)