Bob Downes

Bob Downes (born July 22, 1937 in Plymouth , England ) is a British flautist and saxophonist of creative jazz and composer .

Live and act

As a musician, Downes is self-taught . He started playing the saxophone at the age of 19 and also worked as a blues singer; from 1968 he concentrated on the flute and now plays the Boehm flute as well as South American, Chinese and Japanese bamboo flutes, including the shakuhachi . As a studio musician, he played with John Barry , Jimmie Nicol , Chris Andrews , Julie Driscoll , Alex Harvey and the Manfred Mann Earth Band . In 1968 he founded his Open Music Trio , in which he worked with Barry Guy , Barre Phillips , Jeff Clyne , Harry Miller and Glen Moore . He also played in Ray Russell's Rock Workshop , the London Jazz Composers Orchestra , the Mike Westbrook Band and Keith Tippett .

Since 1974 he has concentrated on solo appearances as a flautist, but has also appeared with poets such as William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg . He settled in Germany in the 1980s. He founded his Alternative Medicine Quintet in 1978 and a Flute Orchestra in 1984 . Currently (2016) he is on the road with various projects from duo to quartet in southern Germany.

As a composer, he wrote ballet music for The Royal Ballet , The London Contemporary Dance Theater , the Rambert Ballet , the Dance Theater of Harlem , The Royal Canadian Ballet , the Komische Oper Berlin and the Staatstheater Stuttgart .

Discographic notes

• Open Music, 1970 (CD 2010)
• Deep Down Heavy , 1970
• Electric City , 1970
• Diversions (with Barry Guy and Dennis Smith), 1972
• Episodes at 4 am , 1974 (CD 2007)
• Hells Angels - A Visit to the Devil (with Big Band), 1975
• Solos , ca.1984
• Songs For Mother Earth , 1997
• Downes and Baumeister , 1998
• The Inner Universe I, II & III , 1998
• You're Funkin 'Good , 2001
• Bob Downes & the Alphorn Brothers , 2004
• Flashback, 2009
• Crossing Borders , 2009
• 5 trios , 2010
• New York Suite , 2011
• Mixed Bags , 2012 (2 CDs)
• Requiem for Faruq Z. Bey , 2012
• Blowin 'with Piano , 2015
• Blowin 'with Bass (2016, with Barry Guy, Paul Bridge and Andrew Cleyndert )
• It's A Mystery , 2017
• 3 trios , 2017
• Let Your Mind ... Space Out - 80th Birthday Celebration, 2017
• Jazz Party , 2018
• A Blast ... from the Past , 2018

Lexigraphic entries

• Ian Carr , Digby Fairweather , Brian Priestley : Rough Guide Jazz. The ultimate guide to jazz music. 1700 artists and bands from the beginning until today. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1999, ISBN 3-476-01584-X .

Web links

• Works by Bob Downes in the catalog of the German National Library
• Web presence with discography
• Meeting ( All About Jazz )