Stephen Grew

I play piano and electronic keyboards. And I live in a great place, Lancaster, Lancashire, England. I was born just down the road by the sea and sand dunes, on the Fylde coast, a vast expanse of light, space and a place to make pictures, pots and music. Since moving to Lancaster 16 years ago I have devoted all of my energies to making music, completely made in the moment, improvised!Since the world has changed again, I have been staging more gigs locally, I play with some great musicians, Gulliver Maxwell an alto saxophone player and vocalist Steve Lewis, Lancastrian players. My first band was with Steve Lewis and George McKay (Charivari) in 1995. I have toured consistently since 1996, in Grew Trio with the great Mancunian players, drummer Phillip Marks and sax/electronics player Richard Scott who I met through Steve Lewis in 1995. We have mainly performed in Britain but also performed in prestigious Modern music festivals in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Latvia and Canada.In 2000 Richard Scott left Grew trio and after a duo collaboration with Sheffield based sax/bassoon player Mick Beck, Mick joined Grew trio to form Grew Quartet in 2006, with Oxford based bass player Dominic Lash. At times I have had to work as a shop keeper, assembler of golf trolleys, gardener and fisherman. My current work takes me to working in Grutronic, (Myspace.com/grutronicmusic) with guests Evan Parker, Orphy Robinson, Paul Obermayer and Grew quartet, a recent Orchestral project with Nicholas Grew and duos featuring violinist Graham Clark, drummer Tony Bianco, Phillip Marks, and drummer / electronics musician David Ross all of whom are based outside of Lancaster.Our music comes out of a need to play music and communicate with sound at the moments of creating it, this process becomes very refined over many years. The long periods of time devoting the workman like instrumentalists approach to making this kind of music, creates a greater clarity of playing and composing, until a bit of magic conversation appears! Really wonderful things take you somewhere and change you even if you didn't ask for it!