Hilary Seabrook - writer, podcaster, musician

In the latest episode of Harmonious World , I am joined by guitarist, composer and bandleader  Steve Banks . Our discussion is all around his new album -  Emboldened  - which he is currently playing around the UK with his extraordinary quintet. This was a fascinating conversation and please do listen to the whole album if you can - Steve and I discuss many of the tracks in our conversation, but the entire collection is worth a listen. Please do try to get to see Steve if you're in the UK. Thanks to Steve for allowing me to play extracts from  Emboldened  alongside our conversation. For a debut album, this is truly an astonishing piece of work. As Steve and I discuss in our podcast conversation, Emboldened  comes as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic. It is so much more than a musician's reflections on that difficult period in all our lives - it is also a collection of compositions that allow the guitarist and his ensemble to perform and improvise at a deva...

Welcome to the latest episode of Harmonious World , featuring a conversation with pianist  Nic Gerpe , in which we discuss  The Makrokosmos 50 Project . The Makrokosmos 50 Project  is out now and it features the 12 original movements of Georg Crumb's  Makrokosmos Volume 1  for solo piano, followed by the new collection of 12 movements inspired by the former, each one crafted by modern composers. The album is essentially the whole of Crumb's collection, followed by the 12 responses to each movement. All performed by Nic Gerpe. In our conversation, he told me that he'd recorded all 24 tracks in a ridiculously short period of time. Of course, there was practice before that, but still ... The interesting thing is that the first 12 tracks are all by one composer and the following 12 by individual composers. Yet there is a sense of unity about the whole album. Nic's playing is consummate, but the writing, too, is quite beautiful. These short individual pieces stand al...