Tom Arthurs Trio

Composing Like Tarkovsky

While working on One Year, trumpet player Tom Arthurs kept reshaping the scores. Since the bulk of the original material comprised of fragments, he was able to shift sections from one piece to the next in search of their ideal position. The inspiration had come from film: “For his masterpiece ‘Mirror’, Tarkovsky had no story, no plan, no storyboard. He just shot a lot of material and then, for two years, he had these clothes lines in his house and was putting together the scene into different forms until he had the movie.”

Most of the material is the result of a one-and-a-half month long stretch of quiet in between very busy phases in 2014. Three years later, the music from that bout of intense creativity is now released in a new ensemble constellation that sees Arthurs expand his long-time duo with pianist Richard Fairhurst to a trio with the inclusion of Finnish percussionist Markku Ounaskari: “The poetry of Markkus’s playing is astounding, he’s never showing off, never pushing, his touch is so beautiful. He uses a pretty special drum kit with a concert bass drum.”

As a consequence of the open-ended composition approach, many of the pieces juxtapose different approaches, from almost pure sound art via Feldman’s long works to the essentialism of the Berlin reductionist movement. One Year opens up a space where everything feels connected and anything is possible, where quiet really is the new loud. It is one of those records that feel like they could change your life – now all you need