ALEX PAXTON
Composer. Improvising-trombonist.
“a riotous, hot pink overabundance of love and rage” The Wire
“In a dark, time this music will make you smile...This is the most joyous sound I’ve heard in ages!”
New York Times
“A Magician of Sound...i was seduced...hyperkinetic rainbow-hued...it is joy & freedom.”
Financial Times (Happy Music for Orchestra Review)“Paxton will Make your ears ping..brings brightly coloured, loopy joy to our ears..sweet energy & frantic humour...It’s jazzy & noisy & oddly serious.” The Guardian
“a Brit who defies every conceivable genre boundary…an extremely modern and future-oriented style.”
Paul Hindemith Prize winner 2023
"a highly innovative...of exceptional creative imagination and musical energy, packed with life force unlike anything else.”
Ivor Novello British Composer Awards. Winner 2021, BBC music Magazine
“Unbridled joy…sophisticated, passionate music full of pulsating energy and stylistic diversity.“ Ernst von Siemens Composition 2023“Seriously intoxicating music” Arts Desk
“This is what an orchestra can be like in the 21st century:
an ensemble that speaks with one voice yet also gives voice to each of its members”
The Times
“Fantastic delirium...An effervescence of day glow energy that just can’t be resisted” BBC 3 New Music Show, Tom service
“Paxton is a monster improviser …connects his garrulous attack to the most extroverted playing of George Lewis & Roswell Rudd...Bandcamp Daily Best Contemporary Classical.
Peter Margasak
“
Surfing on the crest of its exuberance is an extraordinary experience”
The Wire
““fantastically bananas free-jazz-orchestra maximalism ….. unmapped technicolour territory as unique a vision as you might hear anywhere.” The Quietus
The Wire
““fantastically bananas free-jazz-orchestra maximalism ….. unmapped technicolour territory as unique a vision as you might hear anywhere.” The Quietus
"Paxton is a system-crasher of genre, who merges jamming video game soundtracks, musical overtures, virtuoso chamber music and jazz improv into an unmistakable style...highly complex, sophisticated and extremely entertaining, virtuoso ad absurdum" Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik
“Really quirky, fun, dynamic…Wow! gives your senses a bit of shake. I tell you, I had to listen a number of times, absolutely terrific.”
James McDougall - BBC Radio 3
“a manic, full-frontal, maximalist music, coming at you like a freshly-unleashed tiger, with an energy that is inspiring & exhausting...African water drumming, free jazz, Ligeti, Roobarb and Custard...brave pursuit of a self-made vision...seriously intoxicating music” Arts Desk Happy Music for Orchestra
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Like minimal but loadsmore notes like video-games but with more song like jazz but much more gay like old gay music but more current like yummy sweet but more stick like paint but more scratch like tapestry but filthily like prayer but more loud like loud groove and more rude like fingers and faces too but somehow more smelly like smelly things cooking with more chew and change like louder prayers that groove with like stinking-hot-pink in poo-brown but even more desperate-like than that like drums and Dream Musics…
- Paxton’s Ilollipop with Ensemble Modern.
NEW ALBUM: Happy Music for Orchestra
will be out on 28th April 2023 on Delphian Records
“an opportunity to revisit that early life carnival of sensation, to suspend the imperatives of orderly and goal-orientated progress and luxuriate in immediacy...wild imaginings...Paxton forges structures that miraculously hold together, while threatening constantly to burst apart from the sheer exuberance of his tempestuous orchestration...the orchestra seem to skip, hop or spin as the mood of the instant demands....melodic fragments flitter like incidental patterns forming across the brilliantly tinted surface of a swarming continuum....conceptually sophisticated as well as irrepressible in spirit.” the Wire (Happy Music for Orchestra Review)
Photo Peter Tanish
Photo Peter Tanish
“Fun and really rich, varied, dense, maximalist, fun, joyful and unafraid.”
Gaudeamus Composition jury 2022
“jovial and gay… Vivaldi-like spring chicken energy… this music is like a refreshing drink of water after a long period of thirst…manic treat to keep our spirits up” Morning Star (ilolli-pop)
“A Magician of Sound.
classical-jazz sonic blasts ...violently overwhelming...I was seduced, and am not the only one
...digesting Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five band recordings, John Zorn’s Downtown experimentalism, Harrison Birtwistle’s brash blocks of sound, music of the Celtic oral tradition, Hildegard von Bingen’s medieval chants — and it all comes out, sometimes at once...carefully constructed ...forbiddingly dense it is balanced by its playfulness... hyperkinetic rainbow-hued...its joy and freedom.”
Financial Times (Happy Music for Orchestra Review)
Gaudeamus Composition jury 2022
“jovial and gay… Vivaldi-like spring chicken energy… this music is like a refreshing drink of water after a long period of thirst…manic treat to keep our spirits up” Morning Star (ilolli-pop)
“A Magician of Sound.
classical-jazz sonic blasts ...violently overwhelming...I was seduced, and am not the only one
...digesting Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five band recordings, John Zorn’s Downtown experimentalism, Harrison Birtwistle’s brash blocks of sound, music of the Celtic oral tradition, Hildegard von Bingen’s medieval chants — and it all comes out, sometimes at once...carefully constructed ...forbiddingly dense it is balanced by its playfulness... hyperkinetic rainbow-hued...its joy and freedom.”
Financial Times (Happy Music for Orchestra Review)
“Colourful wonder bag..glam rock - and dubstep-soaked thoroughly refreshing eclecticism
…an impression of exuberant joy, real community, excessive partying and over-scumping champagne. So this album might just be the best time imaginable” Müsik Texte (Ole Hubner)
“Fantastic delirium” Tom Service New Music Show (BBC)
“Uniquely and audaciously manic. Call an ambulance, just in case…the naughtiest…It’s like being tied down and tickled ruthlessly by a gang of nerds.
Amazon
Amazon
“Manic, brilliant, beauty.”
Listen Poney Records
“a joyful mashup . . .such an engaging energy and Ivesian imagination”
Planet Hugill
Planet Hugill
“one of the most exceptional voices from a new generation of UK talent”
The Philharmonia Orchestrathe Wire Magazine
I love music!
Munchy munch chew chew chew gulp spittle teeth graunch grind chop smack smile blood love and laugh; the language of mastication that binds the offal of man-kind into a faggot, regardless of epoch religion and race.
Love food, love music, love.
Joy.Yes.Yum. Mmmm...
"Unique, inventive, brave and arresting”
Worshipful Company of Musicians Jazz Prize
“formidable virtuosity. It seems to be a meditation on virtuosity: Paxton’s own take on Charlie Parker-style bebop or Paganini”
Positionen
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“fantastically bananas free-jazz-orchestra maximalism ….. unmapped technicolour territory…. fantastical sound collages… like a cartoon rollercoaster… unfathomable glitching chaos…unique a vision as you might hear anywhere.” The Quietus
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Positionen
“fantastically bananas free-jazz-orchestra maximalism ….. unmapped technicolour territory…. fantastical sound collages… like a cartoon rollercoaster… unfathomable glitching chaos…unique a vision as you might hear anywhere.” The Quietus
“Eccentric & inventive with more than a touch of anarchy.”
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic OrchestraAlex’s “devised encore” with NYO. BBC Proms
"Feels like an evacuation of something fundamental and urgent...bleeding chunks of something greater than sum of their parts; a compositional outpouring that started its inexorable flow sometime ago and will surely continue on over after the neat boundaries of a mere CD's runtime have been met" TEMPO magazine
“Alex is a bloody phenomenal composer and visionary”
Prxludes.netPhoto: Walter Vorjohann
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Manymore recordings are available here: Work/Listen