Colin Towns
Colin Towns ( born May 13, 1948 in London ) is an English composer, arranger, bandleader, jazz pianist and music producer.
Life and work
After learning piano as a child, he already earned with 13 years of money by playing at weddings and birthdays entertainment music. This he continued and was finally a studio musician. In 1976 he replaced Mickey Lee Soule in the Ian Gillan Band. There he wrote many pieces for the band but also created the soundtrack for the Mia Farrow film Full Circle. When Ian Gillan 1983, the band broke up, to Towns decided to concentrate on composing. He worked regularly for television, such as for Flemming ZDF series, but also wrote film scores, such as for Puppet Masters - Threat from Space ( Donald Sutherland ), for Space Truckers ( with Dennis Hopper), the Cadfael series, The Sandman or for Guest House Paradiso. Since the 1970s, he was involved as a composer for film music at more than 120 productions.
For his music Full Circle Towns in 1977 was nominated for a Saturn Award.
Towns next turned increasingly to jazz. He founded the mid-1990s the Mask Orchestra as Big Band, participated in the musicians as Alan Skidmore, John Surman, Henry Lowther, John Taylor, Norma Winstone and Maria Pia De Vito. He combined in some cases also the sounds of the Big Band with which a string orchestra. Especially in Germany Towns projects with the big bands of some broadcasters carried out and, for example reinterprets the music of Kurt Weill and Frank Zappa. He wrote the arrangements for the project with Chano Domínguez Jazzpaña II, Gerardo Núñez and Michael Brecker and Christof Lauer project Shadows in the Rain. In addition, he founded Provocateur Records own record company to release recordings with some of the musicians playing in the band.
Disco Graphical Notes
- Nowhere and Heaven ( Provocateur, 1996)
- Dreaming Man with Blue Suede Shoes ( Provocateur, 1998)
- The Orpheus Suite ( Provocateur, 2001)
- Another Think Coming ( Provocateur, 2001)
- Full Circle (Soundtrack)
- Frank Zappa's Hot Licks ( and Funny Smells ) (Rent a Dog, 2005) with the NDR Bigband
- Meeting of the Spirits: A Celebration of the Mahavishnu Orchestra (In Out, 2006) with the hr-Bigband
- Visions of Miles: The Electric Period of Miles Davis (In Out, 2009) with the hr-Bigband
- John Lennon - In My Own Write ( Provocateur / NDR, 2010) with the NDR Bigband