Projects

Mouthpiece - featuring Tom Arthurs



Mouthpiece is a collection of music written for trumpet and ensemble, in which the trumpet becomes the voice of the composer, inciting the ensemble to express themselves collectively about the joy and the heartache in the world around us. The beauty and power of the writing rises with the high emotion, indignation and calm ecstasy of the ensemble as a whole

“Composers spend their lives cultivating their musical vocabulary with which to speak out to the world, but who will be their mouthpiece?... and which accent should they use?”

The answer is Arthurs and the ensemble is Fuzzy!

Tom Arthurs is an incredible young trumpet player and is an exceptional exponent of a thriving London jazz and improvised music scene. No stranger to large groups Tom is a member of the F-IRE collective large ensemble and has worked with a vast array of superb jazz artists, certainly not least Kenny Wheeler and John Taylor.

For this special concert series Arthurs will join forces with Ireland's most original and formidable collective Fuzzy Logic Ensemble.

Fuzzy Logic Ensemble is probably the most ambitious jazz group currently based in Ireland. With 10 of Ireland's finest young Jazz and Classical musicians coming together to perform the lyrical yet hard-hitting music of composer Dylan Rynhart. Since it was formed in 2002, this hard working group that has developed a style of their own, setting them apart from most Jazz bands with the flexibility and sonority of their unique instrumentation.

Line-up:

Tom Arthurs trumpet
Sue Rynhart voice
Bill Blackmore flugelhorn
Cathal Roche soprano sax
Nick Roth alto sax
Brian Wynne tenor sax
Kate Ellis cello
Lee Tobin guitar
Dylan Rynhart hammond organ
Derek Whyte bass
Phil MacMullan drums

Media Quotes:

“Tom Arthurs is a world-class improviser” [Tom Barlow - Jazzwise]

“Arthurs is superb on both trumpet and flugelhorn (comparisons with the young Kenny Wheeler aren't out of place), his tone pure, his range effortlessly wide”. - The Guardian

"Fuzzy Logic Ensemble have a music quite unlike anything that has preceded it on the Irish Jazz scene, hugely enjoyable for its quirky beauty and rich orchestral palette. A group to savour" [ Ray Comiskey - The Irish Times ]

"Fuzzy Logic Ensemble, one of the surest signs that the future of Jazz is in safe hands" [ Cormac Larkin - The Sunday Tribune ]

Tom Arthurs was Awarded the Peter Whittingham Award in 2001 and was nominated as Rising Star in both the 2004 and 2007 BBC Jazz Awards.

Composer Dylan Rynhart was awarded the "Best Young Irish Jazz Artist" award at the Cork Jazz Festival 2005.

Leslie speakers were designed specifically for the Hammond Organ, but have been used to amplify other instruments, making use of their specific rotary effects. For this project four rotary speakers were designed and built, to be used as a fully controllable surround sound array. These speakers were built to improve on the clarity of sound from the Leslie speaker and to introduce greater speed control. The below thesis describes the specifications of the Leslie speakers and the construction process of the build and the factors that informed the choice of the components.
The composition "Spin Cycle" makes use of the effects possible with this array. These effects and how they relate to the piece are also detailed.
Spin Cycle Thesis.pdf

History Revision



Breaking Ground invited the Improvised Music Company to commission a jazz musician to work in collaboration with the Ballymun Wind Band.

Dylan Rynhart was commissioned to write an extended jazz piece for the the Ballymun Wind Band and Fuzzy Logic Ensemble. "History Revision" was written in October and November of 2005 while working with the disadvantaged children of Trinity Comprehensive's wind band.

From Sept 05 to March 06, Fuzzy Logic teamed up with the Ballymun Wind Band at the Trinity Comprehensive School in Ballymun for weekly rehearsals. The Wind Band were introduced to jazz from September to October by Musical Director, Ron Cooney, myself and a small rhythm section comprised of members of Fuzzy Logic Ensemble. In November, following a performance of some educational big band numbers, we started rehearsing "History Revision".

"History Revision", which was premiered in March 2006 as part of the Openjazz 06 event in Temple Bar. They were joined by the Alexandra College Jazz Band for the performance.

A total of over 30 musicians were involved in this performance, making it the most ambitious project that FuzzyLogicEnsemble ever completed, not particularly due to compositional complexity or the ammount of musicians but more physically and emotionally complex due to the unique disadvantages that the people of Ballymun have to face daily. Experiencing these socio-economic problems and seeing first hand the difference that artistic input made to the participants lives, was simultaneously inspiring, emotional and unsettling.
There is so much more to be done for this community and FuzzyLogicEnsemble was proud to have participated in this project and to have helped in this small way.

The following documentary was made about this project.

History Revision part 1	History Revision part 2

www.fuzzylogicensemble.com