Venue: The Railway Inn
Tickets: £12 in advance, £15 on the door
Doors: 7:30pm
Show starts: 8pm
British pianist Ashley Henry made his major label debut with the release of the 2018 Easter EP. Drawing from jazz, hip-hop, R&B and punk, the 6-track selection is an imaginative project that boldly explores new musical territory, marking Henry out as an important new voice on the UK scene.
Born and raised in South London, Henry graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in 2016 and has gone on to perform and collaborate with the likes of Jason Marsalis, Terence Blanchard and Jean Toussaint. Within the Easter EP, audio and visual style touchpoints include the likes of Abdullah Ibrahim, Ahmad Jamal, Sinead Harnett, Digital Underground, ZuZu and even Margot Fonteyn, Era Istref and Dreezy. Henry is beautifully influenced by his Jamaican heritage and in particular the wave of Caribbean jazz musicians from the 1950s, including the likes of Joe Harriott, Harold McNair, Dizzy Reece, Harry Beckett and Wilton Gaynair, who arrived in Britain during the jazz boom of the late post war period. Despite this eclectic range of international influences, Henry’s sound remains distinctively British, crazily present and in the true tradition of jazz is bold:
“I just want to be present with my music and the jazz form, I'm only at the start of my journey so i thought it’s was important to celebrate that fact. I wrote Easter, as the title track to celebrate what is to me the funkiest first big holiday in my calendar. I just want people to enjoy the EP and look forward to my first album".
The Easter EP sees Henry tackle a broad range of material in his original tracks and re arrangements of tracks by revered US rapper Nas and indie punk trio The Enemy. His first full studio album will be released in 2019.