Totem Celestial

Totem Celestial is a unique, very special musical encounter: the Alexander Hawkins Trio and electronic musician Matthew Wright present two complementary yet startlingly different visions with their music. The quartet, assembled especially for the asphalt Festival, will play two sets on the Seebühne. The first is an electronic version of the compositions on Hawkins’ album “Carnival Celestial”, which will be released by Intakt Records in April 2023. The second set is the latest instalment of Matthew Wright’s ongoing project “Spheric Totemic”.

Pianist Alexander Hawkins is widely recognised as one of the most innovative and inventive musicians of his generation. He is not only being sought after as a soloist or with his own ensembles, but he has also collaborated with a wide range of artists including Anthony Braxton, Mulatu Astatke, Shabaka Hutchings, Tomeka Reid, Nicole Mitchell and Sofia Jernberg.

Matthew Wright’s work ranges from scores for baroque ensembles and contemporary chamber music groups to digital improvisation, experimental turntablism and website installations, as well as works for dance, theatre and film. His current project, Spheric Totemic, becomes an artwork of fragmented rhythms, bass and surround sound textures, blending influences from DJ Premier, Konono No. 1 and the UK free improvisation scene.

Hawkins and Wright have previously collaborated on projects such as “Sunnosphere” for Jazzfest Berlin and also on a commissioned work for the Pierre Boulez Hall. Their artistic collaborations are moreover available on various recordings, including Hawkins’ “Togetherness Music” (Intakt Records, 2021), according to the press “a masterpiece that can stand alongside the best works of Mitchell, Braxton or Parker”.

Alexander Hawkins’ trio colleagues are star musicians in their own right: Nick Duston, according to the New York Times a “young bass player with hungry ears and a commanding, wide-ranging style” and an “indispensable player in the New York avant-garde”, is a composer, improviser and multi-instrumentalist who has performed at numerous concerts and festivals in the USA and Europe. Drummer Stephen Davis from Belfast also plays in the British free jazz trio Bourne Davis Kane and has worked with Mark Ribot, Evan Parker, Ralph Alessi, Kris Davis, John Taylor, Rufus Reid, Paul Dunmall, Django Bates, Van Morrison and many others. Jazzwise magazine considers him “the most musical of drummers, always sensitive and insightful.”

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The press says:

“British pianist Alexander Hawkins’ music is at once accessible and adventurous, oscillating between composed structures and highly exciting improvisatory elaborations of the free spaces within.” (NRW Jazz)

“Hawkins is one of the much-discussed and striking personalities of the younger jazz generation. From the wider jazz piano history, he distils with precision and intuitive poise his very own approach, marked by transparency, fragility, contrast and polytonality” (Concerto)

“If you allow them to, sounds like these can expand your horizons, open up possibilities and stimulate your senses.” (“Jazz and Beyond” on Matthew Wright)