Neil Yates

mjf originals is a commissioning scheme, a unique opportunity within the UK jazz festival landscape for new regional composers. Launched formally in 2009, mjf originals has been pioneered to encourage musician-composers to experiment with new ideas and help them turn their music from vision into reality.

This year’s commissioned composer is Neil Yates, well-known for his highly personal style of Celtic-jazz and a style of trumpet playing informally christened ‘diddleknock’, which echoes the techniques used on pipes and whistles. Neil is a versatile player and composer, and is in-demand with jazz, big band, rock and folk ensembles. His new piece for mjf originals, Surroundings, can be heard on 31 July in St Ann’s Church.

There’s also a fascinating insight into how the new work has been created: you can attend open rehearsals of the work, follow the development of the piece on the special blog, and there will be a post-show discussion with Neil following the première.

mjf originals also offers the audience a truly unique experience – premières are always exciting events for all involved and mark the end of the first part of the work’s journey. The mjf originals scheme means that we can stage more ground-breaking new jazz from our talented creators for many years to come.

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