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Adam Fairhall

Raised in Cornwall, Adam began, like many pianists, by practising boogie and blues with friends during school lunchtimes. He received piano lessons covering jazz harmony and repertoire in his teens, before moving north to study Contemporary Arts at MMU Cheshire, where he received a first class honours degree and an MA with distinction. Having decided towards the end of his undergraduate studies to devote his time to the study of jazz, Adam followed his studies at MMU with Master’s study at Leeds College of Music, receiving a MMus in Jazz Studies (Performance) in 2005. While at Leeds he studied with pianist Mark Donlon and also took lessons with pianist Matthew Bourne. In 2005 he received the college’s Sam Hood Rosebowl for Outstanding Jazz Performance. Returning to MMU to teach and continue his practice and research, Adam received a PhD in 2008 and continues to hold a part-time post as Programme Leader for Popular Music in the Cheshire faculty’s Department of Contemporary Arts.

Adam’s distinctive piano playing has been noted for the diversity of its stylistic reference points; idioms drawn from any period of jazz history may be blended, collided, subverted, hinted at or played completely ‘straight’ in his performances. Despite this playful and often witty approach, Adam’s playing is committed rather than ironic and detached, and reveals a love of piano jazz from ragtime to free.

Adam’s projects as a leader include a duo with sonic artist Paul J Rogers, in which they mix piano performance with electronic processing, samples from early recordings and home-made instruments such as the diddley-bow. They released their debut album, Second-Handed Blues, on ASC Records in 2011 to excellent reviews and Radio 3 airplay, and have performed at notable venues including the Vortex and the Capstone Theatre, Liverpool.

Adam’s most ambitious project as a leader is The Imaginary Delta, which involves a seven-piece ensemble. The Imaginary Delta was commissioned by Manchester Jazz Festival, and premiered at Band on the Wall, Manchester, in July 2011 to considerable acclaim; the premiere was voted the no. 1 gig of 2011 by journalist Chris Ackerley. The project includes a 3-horn front line and also features Paul J Rogers on laptop, turntable and diddley-bow. The music revisits early jazz forms in a surprising, passionate and at times highly deconstructive way. A live recording was released on SLAM in spring 2012 to 4 and 5 star reviews, and the band will appear as part of the Vortex’s programme for the London Jazz Festival 2012, and at the Forge, Camden in February 2013.

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Album Review

Adam Fairhall / Johnny Hunter: Winifred Atwell Revisited

Read "Winifred Atwell Revisited" reviewed by Chris May


Winifred Atwell was a gifted pianist, born in Trinidad, who came to Britain to study classical music at the Royal Academy of Music in 1946. By the early 1950s, a combination of talent and a husband who knew his way around British popular entertainment had established Atwell as a bill-topping theatrical and recording star. Atwell's happy-go-lucky “honky tonk" style was a combination of American boogie woogie, which she had picked up from US servicemen in Trinidad, and ...

7
Album Review

Nat Birchall Sextet: Exaltation / Live In Athens Vol 1

Read "Exaltation / Live In Athens Vol 1" reviewed by Chris May


The saxophonist Nat Birchall is, alongside his friend the trumpeter Matthew Halsall, one of the instigators of the spiritual jazz scene centred around the northern British city of Manchester, two hundred miles and a lifestyle north of London. Birchall self-released his debut album, The Sixth Sense, in 1999. John Coltrane, Yusef Lateef, Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane were among his formative influences and his music continues along the trajectory they mapped out. Birchall last recorded with his ...

3
Album Review

Adam Fairhall: Friendly Ghosts

Read "Friendly Ghosts" reviewed by Roger Farbey


Following undergraduate studies, virtuoso pianist Adam Fairhall took a Master's degree at Leeds College of Music, receiving a MMus in Jazz Studies (Performance) in 2005. Whilst at Leeds he studied with pianist Mark Donlon and took lessons with British jazz composer Matthew Bourne. The title of his album Friendly Ghosts, Fairhall's debut recording as a soloist, gives a strong clue as to its contents, revisiting as it does the earliest sounds of jazz to the most avant-garde. Stylistically, ...

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Recording

Adam Fairhall and Paul J Rogers, Debut Album "Second-Handed Blues," out on ASC Records, May 2, 2011

Adam Fairhall and Paul J Rogers, Debut Album "Second-Handed Blues," out on ASC Records, May 2, 2011

Source: Michael Ricci

ASC Records are pleased to announce their latest release Second-handed Blues by Adam Fairhall and Paul J Rogers Second-Handed Blues is the debut album by Adam Fairhall (piano) and Paul J Rogers (electronics, sound sculpture and other instruments). Innovative but highly listenable, The music often includes artefacts from the far reaches of jazz history a vocal line from a 1920s vaudeville blues record, perhaps, or strains from a Scott Joplin rag and mixes them with contemporary idioms and ...

“A rising star of the piano” – BBC Radio 3, Jazz Line-Up

“There is no jazz code he hasn’t deciphered and mastered” – Manchester Evening News

“A real find” - Jazz UK

“Fairhall’s piano is a questing, quixotic voice with a comprehensive ‘inside and out’ vocabulary” – Jazzwise

"Adam Fairhall is a total star" - Independent on Sunday

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Winifred Atwell...

Efpi Records
2021

buy

Fragments (2017)

Northern Contemporary
2019

buy

Friendly Ghosts

Efpi Records
2017

buy

The Imaginary Delta

Slam Records
2012

buy

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