Home » Jazz Musicians » Bex Burch
Bex Burch
Composer, percussionist, producer and instrument maker Bex Burch has employed handmade xylophones and percussive instruments to carve out a unique sonic space. Her restless creativity and desire to embrace new challenges has seen her music straddle minimalism, avant-garde, post-punk, and improvisation with equal success.
Burch’s critically acclaimed 2023 solo album, 'There is only love and fear' was released via Chicago’s International Anthem and named The Guardian's Contemporary Album of the Month. She has previously released music as part of Boing! with Leafcutter John, and Flock with Sarathy Korwar and The Comet Is Coming’s Danalogue. She runs the band and label Vula Viel and has collaborated with influential artists like Peter Zummo, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Ben LaMar Gay, and Dan Bitney.
Bex spent an 18-month instrument-making apprenticeship in Ghana with master gyil player Thomas Sekgura, a formative experience that gave her a deep-seated respect for Dagaare music and the confidence to pursue a path that reflected her own voice. A restless, questing spirit has informed her career since, from the open-hearted collaborations of her musical releases to the creation of a new xylophone she handmade under Jamie Linwood’s mentorship, tuning its harmonics to maximise the resonance she wanted to hear.
A series of sold-out European live shows have reconfigured the record’s textural approach within a solo setting, whether combining the rhythmic timbres of wood, metal and audience claps or duetting with the echoed sounds of dripping water. Emphasising space, repetition and aspects of chaos - themes that characterise an approach she calls “messy minimalism” – Bex’s music continues to evolve. More projects are promised soon as her wide-eyed approach to improvisation continues to break new ground.
Awards
Sound and Music 'New Voices' 2018-2019
Songlines 'Top of the World' Album
Julius Isserlis Scholarship 2007 (Royal Philharmonic Society)
Tags
Flock: Flock
by Chris May
One of the strengths of the alternative jazz scene which has grown in London since around 2016 is the interconnectivity of its players. Everyone knows each other and ad hoc bands constantly come together. Flock is the latest such conclave and it is something of a supergroup. On this its first album--others are promised--the lineup is reeds player Tamar Osborn, keyboard player Danalogue, pianist Al MacSween, vibraphonist Bex Burch and percussionist Sarathy Korwar (check Additional Personnel below ...
read moreVula Viel: Do Not Be Afraid
by Gareth Thompson
Having once wowed audiences at the London Jazz Festival, Vula Viel acquired a more unlikely fan in the shape of Iggy Pop. Maybe it's this trio's post- punk verve that grabbed the Stooges frontman, or Pop might have been seduced by hearing the gyil (Ghanaian xylophone) in such an original context. Bex Burch was training as a classical percussionist when she made a trek to Upper West Ghana. Whilst engaged in farming there, she studied with xylophone artist ...
read more“powerful, delicate, moving, avant-garde and utterly, wonderfully accessible … A bold, affecting work that hits on levels micro and macro, There is only love and fear might just be a sonic masterpiece” - Jane Cornwall, Songlines ‘Top of World’ album ★★★★★
“Minimalism is usually cool, detached, frictionless and mathematical. The music made by percussionist Bex Burch is not any of these things. …this is minimalism that isn’t afraid to break into a sweat and get its hands dirty (quite literally, given that Burch actually builds her own instruments from scratch).” - Guardian ‘Contemporary Album of the month’ ★★★★