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Mark de Clive-Lowe

Musical maverick Mark de Clive-Lowe seems an impossibility at first sight—juggling piano, synths, live sampling and beat making all on-the-fly, brought to life with a casual ease that’s mind-boggling. The Japanese-New Zealander was raised primarily in New Zealand where he learnt piano from a young age developing an avid passion for jazz through his father’s record collection. In high school, he fell in love with Native Tongues hip hop and early UK jungle – laying the foundation for what was to come next…

During his hugely formative decade at the epicenter of London’s underground music scene, MdCL helped evolve broken beat alongside some of the UK’s most forward-thinking trailblazers, establishing himself as a new voice in progressive electronic music and leading global tastemaker DJ Gilles Peterson to designate him “the main behind a million great tunes”. Since 2008, MdCL has called Los Angeles, California home where his acclaimed club night CHURCH has taken his signature sound of technology and beat-infused jazz mash-up from coast to coast and around the globe. Equal parts pianist, composer and live production wizard, MdCL’s sets are a treat for the listeners, the dancers, the progressives and the purists alike - as he casually erases the lines between genres and eras.

Whether he’s remixing classic Blue Note Records in real time, on stage joined by the likes of Kamasi Washington, Nia Andrews or Eric Harland, improvising solo piano or creating live soundtracks to classic film material, MdCL is an artist in constant evolution, reaching for that next level. He has performed with Harvey Mason, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Dwight Trible and Jean Grae; remixed Shirley Horn, Hiatus Kaiyote, Mantombi Matotiyana and Jerry Goldsmith; and recorded as producer and collaborator with artists all over the planet. Having contributed to over 300 releases, to call MdCL prolific is something of an understatement.

MdCL has featured at festivals including Montreal Jazz, North Sea Jazz, Uberjazz, Tokyo Crossover Jazz Festival, Montreux Jazz Atlanta and is an established performer globally from South Africa to Japan and across the US and Europe.

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8
Album Review

Mark de Clive-Lowe, Melanie Charles, Shigeto: Hotel San Claudio

Read "Hotel San Claudio" reviewed by Chris May


Lovers of Pharoah Sanders' fundamentally acoustic spiritual-jazz may experience something of a road-to-Damascus moment listening to Hotel San Claudio: the realisation that high-tech, digital-era excursions can, in the right hands, bring more than just novelty to the music. Almost half of Hotel San Claudio--a collaboration between keyboardist Mark de Clive-Lowe, vocalist and flautist Melanie Charles and drummer Shigeto--is an explicit tribute to Sanders, with two complementary but singular versions of his “The Creator Has A Master Plan" ...

24
Interview

Mark de Clive-Lowe: Celebrating Pharoah Sanders

Read "Mark de Clive-Lowe: Celebrating Pharoah Sanders" reviewed by Chris May


It is a curious thing, but among the present day champions of Pharoah Sanders' fundamentally acoustic music are two early adopters of post-production heavy, digitally-enabled, high-tech mutoid jazz: bassist and producer Bill Laswell and keyboardist and broken-beat pioneer Mark de Clive-Lowe, whose Freedom: Celebrating The Music Of Pharoah Sanders (Soul Bank) was released in July 2022. Laswell, a generation older than de Clive-Lowe, was first out of the traps in the 1990s, with his avant-funked up productions ...

13
Album Review

Mark de Clive-Lowe & Friends: Freedom: Celebrating The Music Of Pharoah Sanders

Read "Freedom: Celebrating The Music Of Pharoah Sanders" reviewed by Chris May


Albums by artists who are best known for their work outside jazz are best approached with caution. Keyboard player Mark de Clive-Lowe's Freedom: Celebrating The Music Of Pharoah Sanders is one such. Before moving to Los Angeles, Clive-Lowe lived in London, where he was prominent in the late 1990s/early 2000s broken beat movement, which, without getting too complicated about it, fused electronic dance music with a little jazz and funk. Clive-Lowe, however, is no wannabe jazz musician. ...

3
Live Review

Mark de Clive-Lowe at Nublu 151

Read "Mark de Clive-Lowe at Nublu 151" reviewed by Tyran Grillo


Mark de Clive-Lowe Nublu 151 Winter Jazzfest New York, NY January 10, 2019 New York City's Winter Jazzfest is about nothing if not cross-pollination. This guiding principle crystallized at every venue, but perhaps nowhere so psychosomatically as at Nublu 151, where Mark de Clive-Lowe spearheaded late-night jamming of a decidedly electronic persuasion. Trading in his jazzier hat, as worn with such humility in his recent Heritage, for that of DJ, he promised the dance ...

10
Album Review

Mark de Clive-Lowe: Heritage

Read "Heritage" reviewed by Tyran Grillo


On Heritage, pianist/composer/producer Mark de Clive-Lowe sows two rhythmic seeds for every melodic plant reaped from an autobiographical crop. The half-Japanese, half-New Zealander's spiritual kinship with Japan runs deep. His blending of electronics and sampling elicits a precision that only enhances the freer passages, and provides a fitting platform for his copilots Josh Johnson (alto sax and flute), Teodross Avery (tenor sax), Brandon Eugene Owens (bass), Carlos Niño (percussion) and Brandon Combs (drums). At home in jazz and ...

8
Album Review

Mark de Clive-Lowe: Live at the Blue Whale

Read "Live at the Blue Whale" reviewed by Phillip Woolever


This fine, four-song EP provides testimonial insight to de Clive-Lowe's influences and inspiration, through three cover songs and one extended original piece recorded at a Los Angeles club during March of last year. Contrasting some of de Clive-Lowe's more recent beat-based techno projects this is primarily and predominately a jazz record, and quite an enjoyable one, indeed. De Clive-Lowe joins a well-rounded quartet with Josh Johnson on sax and flute, Brandon Eugene Owens on bass and ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Hotel San Claudio

Soul Bank Music
2023

buy

Freedom: Celebrating...

Soul Bank Music
2022

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Masina / Mizugaki

Mother Tongue Records (2)
2020

buy

Dreamweavers

Mother Tongue Records (2)
2020

buy

Take The Space Trane

From: Take The Space Trane
By Mark de Clive-Lowe

Videos

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