Colin Towns

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Colin Towns (born May 13, 1948 in London ) is an English composer , arranger , band leader , rock and jazz pianist and music producer .

Live and act

After learning the piano as a child, he made a living at the age of 13 by playing light music at weddings and birthdays. He continued this and eventually became a studio musician. In 1976 he replaced Mickey Lee Soule in the Ian Gillan Band and was also taken over by band founder Ian Gillan in his new hard rock band Gillan . There he wrote many pieces for the band together with Gillan, but also created the soundtrack for the Mia Farrow film Full Circle. When Ian Gillan broke up the band in 1982, Towns decided to concentrate on composing. He worked regularly for television such as the ZDF series Flemming, but also wrote film scores , for example for Puppet Masters - Threat from Space (with Donald Sutherland ), for Space Truckers (with Dennis Hopper ), the Cadfael series, The Sandman or for Guest House Paradiso . Since the 1970s he has been involved in more than 120 productions as a composer for film music.

Towns was nominated for the Saturn Award in 1977 for his music to Full Circle .

Towns also turned more and more to jazz . In the mid-1990s he founded the Mask Orchestra as a big band , in which musicians such as Alan Skidmore , John Surman , Henry Lowther , John Taylor , Norma Winstone and Maria Pia De Vito played. In doing so, he sometimes combined the sounds of the big band with those of a string orchestra. In Germany in particular, Towns has also carried out projects with the big bands of some radio companies and, for example, reinterpreted the music of Kurt Weill or Frank Zappa . He also wrote the arrangements for the Jazzpaña II project with Chano Domínguez , Gerardo Núñez and Michael Brecker and for Christof Lauer's Shadows in the Rain project . He also founded his own record company with Provocateur Records in order to publish recordings with some of the musicians playing in the band.

Discographic notes

  • Baron Rojo / Volume Brutal (Chapa Disco, 1982)
  • Nowhere and Heaven (Provocateur, 1996)
  • Dreaming Man with Blue Suede Shoes (Provocateur, 1998) with Norma Winstone and Maria Pia De Vito
  • The Orpheus Suite (Provocateur, 2001)
  • Another Think Coming (Provocateur, 2001)
  • Full Circle (Soundtrack)
  • Frank Zappas Hot Licks (and Funny Smells) (Rent a Dog, 2005) with the NDR Bigband
  • Meeting of the Spirits: A Celebration of the Mahavishnu Orchestra ( In + Out , 2006) with the hr big band
  • Visions of Miles: The Electric Period of Miles Davis (In + Out, 2009) with the hr big band
  • John Lennon - In My Own Write (Provocateur / NDR, 2010) with the NDR Bigband

Filmography (selection)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Towns, Colin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English composer, arranger, band leader, jazz pianist and music producer
DATE OF BIRTH May 13, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH London