NC Jazz: John Law

John Law, a prize-winning classical prodigy on piano, turned away from classical piano studies to pursue jazz and improvised music when he was 23 and has been involved in, and acclaimed for, a wide variety of contemporary jazz and classical projects: from solo piano concerts and albums, through trio and quartet tours and recordings, right through to large scale works for his semi-classical ensemble Cornucopia.

He has played at over fifty festivals worldwide including North Sea Jazz Festival (Rotterdam), Delhi International Jazz Festival and London Jazz Festival at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and in clubs and concert halls all over the UK, mainland Europe, North America and beyond, working with musicians as diverse as Gwilym Simcock, Andy Sheppard, Jason Rebello, Tim Garland and Evan Parker. He has recorded over forty albums. John’s main projects currently are his acclaimed quartet Congregation, featuring Mercury Prize nominee James Mainwaring and playing John’s original music, bringing together acoustic and electronic music, his all-acoustic quartet Re-Creations, featuring Parliamentary Jazz Award winner Sam Crockatt, playing versions of tunes from jazz/pop/classical and Renaissance, an ambient, electronic keyboards project with saxophonist Jon Lloyd and visual artist from Tangerine Dream, Patrick Dunn, playing improvised music over samples created out of sacred vocal music from the 15^th and 16^th centuries.

In 2020 John Law was awarded a prestigious Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists. In 2020 he was awarded an Arts Council touring award to tour his Congregation project and in 2021 a further Arts Council touring award to tour Renaissance.