Andy Sheppard
“I heard Coltrane and I thought ‘Yeah, that’s it, that’s what I want to do’, so I sold everything I owned, bought a saxophone, and did nothing else but play for two years.”
Andy Sheppard is one of Europe’s leading saxophonists, a rare British musician who has had a profound impact on the international jazz scene. Sheppard, who was born in Wiltshire in 1957, took up the sax at the age of 19 and was playing in public within three weeks. After a period in Paris where he played in bars seven nights a week and worked with groups including performance art band Urban Sax, he returned to the UK in the mid-1980s and began his recording career.
His first album as leader for ECM (after many collaborations with Carla Bley on sibling label, WATT) was Movements in Colour, released in 2009. Here Sheppard heads an outstandingly [...]
“I heard Coltrane and I thought ‘Yeah, that’s it, that’s what I want to do’, so I sold everything I owned, bought a saxophone, and did nothing else but play for two years.”
Andy Sheppard is one of Europe’s leading saxophonists, a rare British musician who has had a profound impact on the international jazz scene. Sheppard, who was born in Wiltshire in 1957, took up the sax at the age of 19 and was playing in public within three weeks. After a period in Paris where he played in bars seven nights a week and worked with groups including performance art band Urban Sax, he returned to the UK in the mid-1980s and began his recording career.
His first album as leader for ECM (after many collaborations with Carla Bley on sibling label, WATT) was Movements in Colour, released in 2009. Here Sheppard heads an outstandingly gifted international quintet featuring guitarists John Parricelli and Eivind Aarset, tabla player Kuljit Bhamra and Arild Andersen on bass. John Fordham in the Guardian called it “lyrical, playful, accessible – and pure Sheppard”.
Extending the range of his widely praised Trio Libero project (“an album of stately elegance and beauty”) in 2012 with Michel Benita and Seb Rochford, Sheppard added guitarist Eivind Aarset (who made significant contributions to Movements In Colour) to the band to form the Andy Sheppard Quartet, first heard on Surrounded by Sea. With Aarset’s ambient drones and electronic textures as a backdrop, the quartet have greater space than ever to explore. The album includes new compositions, open improvisations, an Elvis Costello tune, and the Gaelic traditional ballad “Aoidh, Na Dean Cadal Idir”. Sheppard also features on Ketil Bjørnstad’s album La Notte, a sort of “soundtrack to an inner film”.
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