Polar Bear

http://www.polarbearmusic.com/

Rogers Main Stage: Saturday, 6pm – 7pm

Artist Biograpy

Seb Rochford (drums)
Pete Wareham (tenor saxophone)
Mark Lockheart (tenor saxophone)
Tom Herbert (double bass)
Leafcutter John (mandolin and electronics)

Polar Bear are London based avant jazz quintet. Led from the back, by Seb Rochford ,they  are part of long great jazz tradition of drummer led bands stretching  back through Art Blakey and Chick Webb.  Seb is well known as drummer in the Hendrix inspired jazzers Acoustic Ladyland. He has played and recorded with a remarkably diverse range of people including Joanna McGregor, Adele, Brian Eno, David Byrne, Patti Smith and Yoko Ono. He also drummed in an early incarnation of Pete Doherty’s Babyshambles playing on their first single. This wide range of collaborators is matched by the breadth of his musical taste that includes not only the jazz giants but also other artists such as grime artists Skepta,Devlin, Durrty Goodz,dubstep geniuses Burial and Kode 9 and awe inspiring singer Kaushiki Chakrabarty
Their new eponymous album is their first since 2005’s Mercury nominated Held On The Tips Of Fingers, which also got a place in Jazzwise “100 Jazz Albums that changed the World” and The Guardian’s “1000 albums you must hear before you die”

Sometimes described as post-jazz, linking them to the post rock of Sigur Ros, Talk Talk and Radiohead.  Their sound appeals as much to jazz traditionalists as to people who don’t normally do jazz like  hip-hop and indie rock fans. Celebrity admirers include Vic Reeves,Portishead and the Mighty Boosh, The Boosh, a combination prog jazz fanatic Julian Barratt and the glam punk kid and Jagger fan Noel Fielding, have personally selected Polar Bear to star in the Mighty Boosh festival in Kent in July 2008.

In Polar Bear you can hear echoes of the whole of the jazz tradition from the fusion of Bitches Brew-era Miles to Free Jazz of Coltrane and Albert Ayler. From the Hard and Be-Bop of the 40s and 50s to the frenetic ensemble playing of early jazz. But alongside the American tradition, there is also something that suggests the English pastoral sensibility of Neil Ardley, Kenny Wheeler, John Surman, Keith Tippett .  There are  also elements in the Polar Bear sound that suggests they have gone beyond jazz and have been listening to  avant garde classical composers like, Stockhausen  and Steve Reich, the  punk funk  of Pil and Rip Rig and Panic, laptop glitch of Fennesz and the quirky Anglo-French prog of Gong.  . While you can hear elements of all these types of music, Polar Bear transcends these genres to make a form of British jazz that is uniquely their own and reflects UK music and life in the twenty first century.