Delightful Precipice

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Delightful Precipice is a jazz orchestra 19-piece led by Django Bates.


Following the demise of Loose Tubes, Django Bates formed the eight piece Powder Room Collapse Orchestra, a band which produced the highly acclaimed Music for the Third Policeman album in 1990. However, the desire to write for a large ensemble remained and in 1991, the orchestra Delightful Precipice was formed to play new work written by Django. It was an eighteen piece outfit with a small string section, a small brass section and instruments like French horn which aren't usually associated with jazz. Never one to take the easy option, the first project Django undertook was a commission from a The Old Bull Arts Centre, London to write a series of new works for the eighteen piece orchestra and one of Europe's leading new circus companies, Snapdragon Circus !!! This work was performed to sold out audiences under canvas in London for a week, and included delicacies such as a bagpipe playing chicken on a piece called "Scotch Egg" (!). The music was mainly inspired by the late Angela Carter's book Nights at the Circus, which in fact was also the title of one of the most impressive pieces. The critics and the audiences loved it: "Kids of all ages, as they say, were ecstatic" The Guardian 1991 "Clowning around Fantastic Sounds" The Stage 1991 "Totally brilliant!!! Fantastic!!!" City Limits 1991

The current 'edition' of Delightful Precipice, a similar orchestra but now with nineteen musicians and without the string section, features several ex-Loose Tubes performers such as saxophonists Iain Ballamy, Mark Lockheart and Julian Arguelles , flautist Eddie Parker and trumpeter Chris Batchelor , as well as instruments such as french horn, tuba and violin. The orchestra undertook a major tour in the UK and Europe in the autumn of 1993 concluding with a date at the prestigious Berlin JazzFest relayed live across Germany by television and radio. Since then they have toured Europe and the UK with performances at the Koln Triennal in Germany, Jazz an der Donau in Vilshofen in Germany, Vooruit Festival in Gent in Belgium, London Jazz Festival in the UK, Saalfelden Jazz Festival

"Delightful Precipice exuded joyous, humane, witty and quite uncategorisable music mingling circus rhythms with heavy-rock, football chants, fast bop and some highly original composing "Venue Magazine 1996 "Delightful Precipice was propelled by a desire to play which provoked three encores" The Guardian 1994 "Delightfully different musical approach" Le Monde, France 1994

[edit] Musicians

[edit] Discography

  • Winter Truce (and Homes Blaze) (1995) JMT 514 023-2
  • Summer Fruits (and Unrest) (1993) JMT 514 008-2

[edit] Radio

  • Django Bates' Delightful Precipice. Includes interview with Bates. Tightrope, Armchair march, Eden expres, Fox Across the Road, Queen of Puddings, You can't Have Everything, The Loneliness of Being Right, Candles Still Flicker, Peculiar Terms of Intimacy, Discovering Metal, Open Letter to Dave DeFries. Recorded at Adrian Boult Hall, Birmingham. BBC Radio Three 14/5/1994.
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