Bill Laurance Project, Union Chapel

Grammy Award-winning pianist and Snarky Puppy founder-member Bill Laurance presents tracks from his new album, Swift, with help from Snarky’s Michael League on bass and Robert ‘Sput’ Searight on drums, plus members of Holland’s Metropole Orchestra.
Laurance’s critically acclaimed 2014 debut, Flint, was an imaginative blend of punchy grooves, elegant classical melodies and minimalist motifs – at once visceral and cerebral – and this new disc, released 31 March, offers more of the same, but with an even greater range of colours and styles in the mix.
In the pianist’s own words, it’s about “breaking down the barriers between genres” and if the tracks we’ve heard are anything to go by it delivers in spades.
December in New York has hints of Debussy and opens with swirling piano and light-footed acoustic bass before a pulsing, minimalist accompaniment from the Metropole strings creeps in. Red Sand is a whole different animal. Electronica-inspired and ambient, it’s lifted by intricate percussion-work from Searight and a sweeping orchestral backdrop, while U-Bahn is almost film score-like in its scope, with some distorted and disarmingly sweet vocoder vocals from Laurance.
All in all, Flint looks every bit as strong as the pianist’s first outing and hearing live in the cavernous acoustic of Union Chapel will be a thrill. Laurance and the rest of the Snarky Puppy gang get a hero’s welcome whenever they come to London so move fast and bag yourself a ticket.