“If the music breathes life into the filmed images, at times giving them their reason for being, then Colin has given wings to Mon Ange, letting it fly away to a place higher than I ever dreamed”
SERGE FRYDMAN (Mon Ange/My Angel)
“By virtue of the emotive effect that music has on the aural senses, it can create a third dimension to the visual image of a movie. Quite often, it falls to the composer to transform a film’s shortcomings by resorting to a musical “transfusion”. Happily, I had no such problem, in fact, scoring a film with Colin Towns is a real treat. Seldom have I met a composer who can fill the spaces in a film with real music, thus enlarging its wholeness. Another plus with Colin Towns is his ability to write beautiful tunes, something not given to every musician”
PHILIP SAVILLE (The Buccaneers)
“Drama by name but epic in form…sit back, let the curtains part & enter a world of wonder”
JAZZWISE MAGAZINE (‘Drama’ album)
“….brilliant, powerful and emotional score”
OLIVIER DAHAN (Les Rivieres Pourpres 2/Crimson Rivers 2)
“thank you for your beautiful score”
GERARD PIRES (Double Zero)
“working with Colin on the score has been such a blast, it’s given me so many movement ideas. Collaborating with a composer is a long and arduous process but it’s been made infinitely easier by Colin’s almost instinctive grasp of what I need, and his ever accommodating willingness to change or adapt the material”
DAVID BINTLEY, choreographer of Birmingham Royal Ballet
“the best music of Towns’ jazz career…..The Orpheus Suite is a full-throated big band score, and the prospect of hearing this mighty band live with the ballet is irresistible. When the 20 players wrap their fingers around Towns’ bravura, high-energy writing, they blow the roof off. Colin Towns has made the score leap with joy”
THE GUARDIAN
“Towns is clearly a composer of a kind that is rare in Britain or indeed in any country…”
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
“seldom have I met a composer who can fill the spaces in a film with real music, thus enlarging its wholeness…long may this gift prevail”
Philip Saville (director)
“thank you for the beautiful music you have composed for Angelina Ballerina…it is just captivating”
Helen Craig (illustrator)
“what an extraordinary sound you made from such a small group”
ADRIAN NOBLE (former Artistic Director and Chief Executive of the RSC)
“one of the country’s most prolific score writers for big and small screen”
FINANCIAL TIMES
“your music was terrific….thank you for your wonderful work”
Randal Kleiser (director)
“rich in dynamic variety and melodic surprises…”
THE GUARDIAN
“The music is an integral part of the movie, creating just the right chilling atmosphere for the supernatural events that take place”
SCREEN
“from the initial hypnotic beat reinforced by slowly swelling orchestration, it was clear that this was to be an evening of tightly organised material…the thrilling performance ended with a standing ovation and then a surging, time shifting encore that sent tingles up the spine”
AUSTRALIAN INDEPENDENT WEEKLY (‘Meeting of the Spirits’ Project)
“Towns is a master of texture and pacing, and he and his top-notch players have together crafted a pulsating suite that is at once thoroughly Miles-ish and highly original”
METRO (‘Visions of Miles’ Project)
“Colin Towns can give big-band music a rock group’s heat, a symphony orchestra’s polyphonic variety and a swing ensemble’s flaring brassy punch”
THE GUARDIAN (‘John Lennon – In My Own Write’ album)
“The most confident and melodically memorable big band recording from Towns….full of wild brass lines, abruptly slamming chords, hot solos and odd resolutions. Folksy themes via Stravinskyesque slews into Mission: Impossible climaxes, and the Beatles’ I Am the Walrus is quirkily recast”
THE GUARDIAN (listed as one of the 1,000 albums to hear before you die)
(‘Another Think Coming’ album)
“rarely does a piece of music demolish the well-known conceptions of sound and structure, but every so often this does happen. Mostly we then speak of avant-garde. Colin Towns presents with his new band Blue Touch Paper a creation, which sounds totally new but still takes us to many known places as well”
JAZZTHING MAGAZINE (‘Stand Well Back’ album)
For more quotes on Colin Towns’ jazz projects
please visit www.provocateurrecords.co.uk and www.bluetouchpaper.com