© Photograph courtesy of Corey Mwamba
Corey Mwamba is one of the U.K.’s most talented jazz vibraphone players.
Born in Derby in 1976, he took lessons on a Yamaha organ when he was about eleven years old and used to sing treble until his voice broke “right in the middle of singing a solo of ‘Once In Royal David’s City’ in Derby Cathedral.”
“But I wasn’t all that interested in music,” says Corey. “My folks were into George Benson, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong, but in the foolishness of youth, I wasn’t. In fact, I didn’t own any music until I reached sixteen when my first tape was an Otis Redding compilation.”
“I got into jazz by the radio when I was trying to pick up a short-wave radio station while I was studying for my French exam. I had never heard anything like it! The broadcast was in French but I picked up on the name Jessica Williams. Anyway, I got hooked.”
Corey went on to college at Southampton. “The library at Southampton was amazing, a complete revelation to me ” he continues. “I didn’t own a CD player until I was nineteen, but you could go into the library, pick up a CD, hand over your card at the music desk, sit in a specially designed chair and listen and read. I did lots of that.”
It had been a long time since Corey played the organ, and at that point he didn’t play an instrument at all. He recalls a day when, ‘with the main intent of impressing a girl’, he went to listen to the college jazz band rehearse. He sat, listening, tapping on a chair. “Someone handed me brushes and I just started messing about. The leader of the band, Dan Mar-Molinero, asked if I wanted to do any gigs. I thought he was joking so I said, “Yeah, sure. When?” He said, “Tomorrow.” So I had to learn to play the drums in a day. I practised like mad.”
The gig went well, but Corey didn’t really want to play drums. He went out and bought John Fordham’s Jazz book. “I looked through the pages of musicians dressed in black demonstrating various things. Then I saw Orphy Robinson on this …thing – and it spoke to me. So I found a very good teacher, Lewis Dyson, had five lessons, and then he told me to do my first gig - I haven’t stopped since.”
“Incidentally, I didn’t get the girl, but on the day I didn’t get the girl, at the end of college, I got Thelonius Monk. Not the first time I heard him – I literally didn’t like it the first time – but since then, Monk has been my first love.”
Corey left Southampton and went to Birmingham University to study Chemistry and then transferred to the University of Derby, leaving with a B. Sc. in Chemistry and Music.
The reading and listening went on as Corey absorbed wider musical experiences: Anthony Kerr with John Parricelli, Wayne Shorter with Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy, Hermeto Pascal, Bartok, Shostakovich – and Lionel Hampton. “I went to the library one day and borrowed a vibraphone compilation tape. Hamp played Stardust and my jaw dropped. How’s he playing that stuff in 1950 something?”
The inevitable outcome was that Corey developed as a highly creative improviser with a wide stylistic ran
ge.
His vibraphone “The Premier OS701 that people occasionally see me wheeling about” was bought with a grant from the Prince’s Trust. He initially intended to buy a Bergerault, but the shop started fobbing him off with excuses as to why the instrument had not arrived in stock, and he was offered the Premier as a stand-in. Telephoning Bergerault, Corey discovered that the reason the instrument had not arrived was because the shop never paid its bills. “The shop then mysteriously disappeared, having extracted about a thousand pounds from me for which I got my hoary, ramshackle Beast (that’s it’s name: it has other, ruder ones). It rattles and shakes, but I do love it - to an extent. It suits me. (I still want a Bergerault, though).”
© Photograph courtesy of Corey Mwamba
Corey's other main instrument is a dulcimer. “It’s a 12 course dulcimer with a big sound box that I bought from a family friend in about 2003. It’s quite heavy. It was supposed to be an instrument I could learn for pleasure, but it’s easier to transport than the vibes. I once took it to an improv. gig and people really liked what I did with it. I enjoy it immensely, especially when I couple it with the laptop.” Corey has also tapped into his scientific interest to use electronics in live performances and composition.
In 2007, Corey was selected for the third intake of the Jerwood/PRS Foundation’s ‘Take Five’ Initiative, produced by the organisation Serious. The Initiative is a significant artist development scheme for emerging jazz musicians that offers a programme of seminars and workshops to the small number of musicians selected each year. The programme is actively supported by professional musicians such as John Surman and Evan Parker who inspired Corey particularly during his time with ‘Take Five’.
But it is the range of involvement that leaves one breathless when looking at Corey’s CV.
Of course there is the long list of musicians with whom he has played - people like Orphy Robinson, Arun Ghosh, Sir Andy Hamilton and the Blue Notes, the Derby Concert Orchestra, Evan Parker, Tony Kofi, Gary Crosby’s NuTroop, The Master Drummers of Africa, and Tomorrow’s Warriors. Corey originally met and Orphy Robinson in 1997 when they and Soweto Kinch gigged with the first incarnation of Tomorrow's Warriors (for that gig called 'J-Life') and which included Jason Yarde, Robert Mitchell, Daniel Crosby, Darren Taylor and Julie Dexter.
His most recent group includes drummer Joshua Blackmore and bassist Dave Kane (another Take Five participant). “The music is totally improvised,” says Corey. “We’ve had some cracking gigs. There was one in front of a swing/modern/mainstream loving crowd in Stratford, and another in front of musicians and a contemporary/improv. loving audience in London.”
There are also three Duos – one with percussionist Walt Shaw who uses amplified ‘found’ objects, small toys and specially constructed instruments as well as conventional percussion.
FREEO is with multi-instrumentalist Orphy Robinson, and a third Duo is Corey with pianist Robert Mitchell in a set of standards and own compositions.
© Photograph courtesy of Corey Mwamba
In 2007, Corey was commissioned to put together a group and compose music for the 25th anniversary of Derby Jazz. The result was Argentum. The piece itself was a representation of silver, with its connections of good fortune, with the first five five-note chords in the piece creating the melodic and harmonic material for the whole thing. You can sample a video of Argentum on Corey’s Myspace site (see below).
© Photograph courtesy of Corey Mwamba
In 2001, Corey came up with the idea of establishing The Symbiosis Ensemble, a network of creative amateur and professional musicians in the East and West Midlands. The network is made up of musicians who give each other moral support, want to play on each other’s gigs, and who are willing to hang out and communicate with audiences, talking about their work in a straight-forward, unfussy manner. The list of those who have become involved is long, but new members are always welcome.
Corey’s work in Education is also intriguing. He has been involved in a project looking at attainment in Year 5 maths at a primary school in Oxford where the children worked out ratios and fractions of intervals, statistical distributions of song forms and created and conducted serialist music using their birthdays. "Bearing in mind they were only nine years old and you only glance briefly at serialism on a music syllabus at the second year, they worked really hard.. If they were arranged for strings you wouldn't be able to tell they were written by nine year olds in a day!"
He has also run a project with sixty Year 2 pupils at a school in Leicester where they put together music about giants, and a long-term project at a junior school in Derby where Corey works with staff and pupils on a project that uses sound technology in relation to the environment. He has also led community workshops and given talks on the science of sound in many other schools and cultural centres.
As if that weren’t enough, Corey has been involved with Derby Jazz; World Song Derby; the Three Cities selection panel steering group, and he currently holds a four-year membership on the regional Arts Council.
In 2008, Corey was nominated for a BBC Jazz Award for Innovation.
You can read more about Corey Mwamba and the many projects in which he is involved on his excellent website at www.coreymwamba.co.uk. You can also listen to some of his music on his MySpace site by clicking here (our favourite is ‘I Can’t Quite See The Passage’) where there are also video clips and details of future gigs.
Corey has a number of gigs coming up during 2010:
Thursday 2nd Sep 8:30pm
House of St Barnabas, 1 Greek Street, London W1D 4NQ
Fee is a charity donation to the House. £5
Charlie Dark has set up a season of acoustic events called Accidental
Powercut. Corey will be doing a solo set, on a bill with Tinashe and Talvin Singh.
'There are limited spaces for this gig - sixty, if I remember correctly. '
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Thursday 30th Sep 7:30pm
Coventry University, Priory Street, Coventry CV1 5FB
Fee is an open donation.
'Walt Shaw's created another cross-art-form masterpiece called Migration! We're
with the Birmingham Improvisers Orchestra, dancer Joanna Geldard and visual
artists Vittor Azevedo and Paul Calderwood.'
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Sunday 17th Oct 2:30pm
Albany Theatre, Douglas Way, London SE8 4AG
FREE!
'An autumn Sunday Session from Arun, this time with Rachael Gladwin [harp], Nat
Birchall [saxes] and Byron Wallen [horns and flutes].'
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Friday 29th Oct 8:00pm
Hidden Rooms, 7a Jesus Lane, Cambridge CB5 8BA
£16/£15/£12
'Arun's quintet hits Cambridge! I think this is the old Cambridge Jazz Club,
but moved to a new venue. If you live near there and want to go, contact me
nearer the time...'
'
Here is a dynamic, creative musician who deserves respect and recognition for the contribution he is making in the development of jazz in the UK today.
© Ian Maund and Corey Mwamba 2008 - 2010