Matthew Bourne
City: Xiamen
Duration: 24 February - 6 April 2012
Please click here to know more about his activities in Xiamen.

Gulangyu, the ‘Piano Island’. Xiamen, where Nanyin is developed.
Jazz. Avant-garde/Experimental music. British musician.
What kind of inspiration can we expect when all these elements are blended?

In this February, the beautiful Xiamen city will be expecting the famous UK musician, Matthew Bourne, for his six-week music residency. This residency in Xiamen is part of the project ‘Residence: British Musicians in China’. During this period, the musician will be dwelling in local life and culture of Xiamen, and inspire his own creativity in music.

From 24 February to 6 April 2012, you can expect to see Matthew Bourne in Xiamen, Gulangyu, and even other small cities surrounded. He will not only experience local life, art and culture of Xiamen and talk to local artists and people, but also create a new piece of music for Xiamen with elements he experienced during his stay.

Public events during Matthew’s residency in Xiamen will include master class lectures, artist talk and demo performance. For more detailed information about the events, please check for updates on our official website, weibo and douban.

About the Musician: Matthew Bourne

Born on 6 October, 1977, Avebury, England; pianist and composer Matthew Bourne first came to national attention as one of the winners of the Perrier Jazz Awards in London, 2001. In the same year Bourne graduated from Leeds College of Music.

Bourne’s unique ability to create powerful imagery through an esoteric piano language along with spoken word samples earned him the Innovation Award at the BBC Radio Jazz Awards in 2002. Bourne continued to develop this methodology, delivering intense and highly personal performances at an international level - many of these becoming the focus of Bourne’s PhD research, undertaken at the University of Leeds. During this period Bourne was the recipient of the IJFO (International Jazz Festivals Organisation) International Jazz Award in 2005, performing at key international festivals in mainland Europe, Scandinavia, Canada and the USA.

By this stage, Bourne had also become co-leader of The Electric Dr M, Distortion Trio and Bourne/Davis/Kane and was beginning to work in a wider context, in the UK and Europe, with other international jazz musicians and with producers such as Dan Berridge (Broadway Project) - a successful partnership that has resulted in the music for two albums (In Finite [2006] and One Divided Soul [2009]) and three award-winning films (Indians [Richard Penfold, UK, 2005], Here is Always Somewhere Else [Rene Daalder, USA, 2008] and Flikan (The Girl) [Fredrik Edfeldt, Sweden, 2009]).

Throughout the last decade Bourne’s particular stamp of individuality and virtuosity, combined with an uncanny ability to communicate with his audiences, attracted commissions from major festivals and organisations to write and produce large-scale projects (The Glenn Miller Project [Leeds Fuse Festival, 2006], Ending [Conservatoires UK, 2007] and Songs from a Lost Piano [Arts Council/Sound and Music, 2009] and music for dance (Mekwae and The Dancical [RJC Dance, 2004/2006]), as well as classical composition (…and I didn’t fall in love, again. Autumn 2004 [BBC/London Jazz Festival, 2004] and Written/Unwritten [London Sinfonietta, 2011]) and collaborative electronic works (Phone Book [Michael Tippett Foundation/Bath International Festival, 2006] and Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals [FuseLeeds, 2009]).

Bourne has continued to pursue his interest in music education, working for a number of years at Leeds College of Music, lecturing in principal study piano, composition and composition analysis. He became Artist in Residence in 2008, leaving in 2010 to pursue his own projects as a leader.

Bourne has released two solo albums (The Molde Concert, 2007 and Montauk Variations, 2011) as well as several collaborative works and continues to be in constant demand as a pianist and analogue synthesist and has recorded and performed with Sam Hobbs, Franck Vigroux, Laurent Dehors, Marc Ducret, John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Andrea Centazzo, Seaming To, Peter Wareham, Barre Phillips, Roger Turner, Paul Dunmall, Tony Bevan, Annette Peacock and Nostalgia 77.

http://matthewbourne.com/

Xiamen
As a historic port city, Xiamen has often been under strong influence of foreign cultures. It became a centre of British trade in the 19th century and was taken over by Japanese invaders at the start of World War II. The nearby Gu Lang Yu Island is also known as 'piano island', as its past residents were wealthy Chinese businessmen with every family owning a piano. Many of the old treaty-ports and colonial buildings in Western styles survive. The piano department at the local University Art College is particularly outstanding, benefiting from the city's long piano tradition.