Meg Morley Trio returns with Second album

Journey Through Home

Album cover [Photo: Robert Crowley] 20.3MB download

In the past few years since Meg Morley released two successful debut recordings, she has travelled further down a path of creating music for silent film, recording her original piano compositions for DVD releases in the USA and taking the Meg Morley Trio with her on several UK tours of score commissions (e.g. British Film Institute and Birmingham's Flatpack Projects). As a silent-film-musician she is recognised as “something of a natural, with a unique and entirely authentic voice for modern audiences” (Neil Brand), collaborating with a variety of artists (including a recent score with Derbyshire's instrumental-electronic trio Haiku Salut) and performing regularly in international film and arts settings (Bristol Ideas; Il Cinema Ritrovato; Netherlands Silent Film Festival). She is now excited to finally be back with her original trio (Richard Sadler on double bass, and Emiliano Caroselli on drums) to launch a second album of her compositions.

Morley, who was deemed an “Exceptional Talent” (Arts Council England), focuses on storytelling, and her “ability to conjure up varied moods and at times unsettling atmospheres” (All About Jazz) emerges again in this album, Journey Through Home, which further displays her diverse compositional skills and eclectic tastes, highlighted in the piece 'e-Gnosis' featuring Turkish bağlama (played by Huseyin Atasever). Her writing, combined with the support, sensitivity and dynamism from Sadler and Caroselli and the overall interaction between the three musicians make this yet another highly original release, living up to the expectation that the trio's debut album “should not be a one off” (Sandy Brown Jazz).

Although classically-trained, Morley's style draws upon a wide range of influences. Her love of cinematic soundscapes is also contrasted with a melodic, almost songwriting-like, approach as well as an increasing pull towards free improvisation. Lyricism, fluidity and sensitivity of touch is set against rhythmic complexity, angularity and intriguing harmonies. Pianistic influences include the UK's David Walters, who, when playing for contemporary dance classes, treats the piano as a percussion instrument, creating driving cross-rhythms and layered textures within varying time signatures; Earlier on, recordings of Bill Evans shed light on the world of improvisation by providing a bridge between the worlds of 'classical' and 'jazz'; And Geri Allen, a commanding master, continually 'feeds the fire' through the legacy of her recordings which equally embrace the classic and subversive.

Meg Morley (piano, and compositions excepting track 2); Richard Sadler (double bass); Emiliano Caroselli (drums); Huseyin Atasever (bağlama track 5);

Recorded: Eastcote Studios, London (George Murphy), Mixed: Richard Sadler, Mastered: Denis Blcakham, Album cover photos: Robert Crowley, Released: 14 June 2022 33 Jazz Records (digital and physical copies also available on Bandcamp); Launched: 606 Club London