Jazz breaking news: Pianist Gwilym Simcock Nominated For Mercury
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Gwilym Simcock has been nominated for this year’s Mercury Prize for his album Good Days at Schloss Elmau.
Recorded at a Bavarian artists retreat, the album, a solo piano set, was released by the Munich-based ACT records earlier this year.
Simcock, 30, a former BBC New Generation Artist and currently a member of the US/UK supergroup The Impossible Gentlemen is a leading light in a prominent new wave of UK jazz artists to break through for wider European attention.
Born in Wales he studied at the specialist music school Chetham’s in Manchester and later graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in London with first class honours. He played in the Proms in 2008 and has also been a member of Tim Garland’s Lighthouse Trio and Acoustic Triangle as well as Stan Sulzmann’s Neon and Bill Bruford’s Earthworks.
The Mercury nomination is sure to raise Simcock’s profile once again as both Led Bib and Kit Downes have achieved great attention via their nominations in the past. Gwilym Simcock appears at the Brit-Jazz Fest in Ronnie Scott’s on 11 August in a double header with Stephano D’Silva.
The other albums nominated are The English Riviera by Metronomy; 21 by Adele; Man Alive by Everything Everything; Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam by Ghostpoet; Anna Calvi by Anna Calvi; Disc-Overy by Tinie Tempah; Build a Rocket Boys! by Elbow; James Blake by James Blake; Let England Shake by PJ Harvey; On A Mission by Katy B; and Diamond Mine by King Creosote and Jon Hopkins. The winner will be announced in September.
– Stephen Graham