KIT DOWNES by Seb Scotney

“The lyf so short, the craft so longe to lerne,” wrote Chaucer. I don’t know a single jazz musician who would dispute that.

This autumn is an important threshold in the life and increasingly impressive craft of 23-year old jazz pianist Kit Downes. His first CD in his own name, Golden on Basho Records, has just been launched, and  he’s about to head off on a nationwide 14-date tour with his trio.

Awards started arriving thick and fast for Downes in 2008. He won Rising Star in the BBC Jazz Awards, and a Parliamentary Award for his work in the first incarnation of Empirical. But there’d already been a quiet but increasing buzz about his playing in jazz circles before then.

He grew up in Norwich, which local hero Dave Amis has turned into quite some hatchery for young jazz talent. Downes then went to the specialist Purcell School. “A fine musician, always great fun,” another pupil in his year remembers. He started doing the Saturday school at the Royal Academy of Music, where he later became a full-time student, and which he left this summer.

I first heard him in a gig in November 2007 at RAM. New York jazz vibraphone star Joe Locke had flown over to work and perform  with students on the Academy’s jazz course and to front a student band in a concert. Tunes were getting played at breakneck tempo, the adrenaline was rushing. At the end of the last set, Locke looked round, slightly out of breath and considered the band he’d been fronting. Looking at Kit Downes he said to the audience:  “They call these guys students. But they’re not just students. They are way beyond that. These musicians I’d expect to share the stand with for the rest of our lives.”

What music has influenced Downes? Among jazz pianists the most significant is Keith Jarrett. But Downes also admires Brad Mehldau, with whom he is starting(far too early, I would say) to be compared. And he describes the life-changing fervour with which he transcribed solos by Oscar Peterson and Lennie Tristano.

Then there are the teachers and mentors: Simon Colam at Purcell, Tom Cawley and briefly Gwilym Simcock at the Academy, and pillars of the British jazz scene like Stan Sulzmann. Classical composers? Ravel, Prokofiev, Stravinksy, Bartok, Debussy, Messiaen have left their mark. Plus singer-songwriters: Don McLean (expect to hear a gorgeous, gentle, wistful “Vincent” on the tour), Rufus Wainright, Nick Drake and Björk.

Ask other musicians what makes him special, and the first answer is his capacity to absorb all of these influences, combined with the inner confidence to be his own man. Other adjectives: professional, adaptable, amusing but thoughtful. He’s easy to get on with. Who needs tantrums?

His playing is always melodic, but the right hand is never overbearing. He’s pitching himself into many contexts, working with other improvising bands exploring different sounds: Troyka with guitar and drums, James Allsop’s Golden Age of Steam with saxophone and drums. This spread of acitivty means he won’t be the same in three months: he will have progressed.

The other members of Downes’s trio are fellow RAM students Calum Gourlay on bass and James Maddren on drums. The three used to share a student house together in West London, but now Downes lives in Brixton with his girlfriend, bassist Ruth Goller, originally from Sudtirol/Alto Adige.

This band is the outfit for which Downes  rites most of his own compositions. For me the stand-out track on  the new CD is “Homely”, an allusion to the fact that  compositions come to mind relatively easily when Downes  pops back from the bustle of London up to the family home in Norwich. The sustained lines, the build of volume and intensity work a treat.

Homely starts with a hauntingly familiar three-note figure. Surely, I ask Downes, it’s that “Muss es sein” thing from Beethoven, isn’t it? “It wasn’t a conscious reference,” he says. “If people can hear things in my music that I can’t, then that’s always a good thing – it’s designed to be open-ended.”

Ambitions? “To go on developing, to adapt to a big range of styles, to produce music people can relate to. That’s the point, isn’t it?”

It’s going to be a fascinating career to watch.

The Kit Downes Trio tour starts this Sunday lunchtime at the Seven Arts Centre in Leeds (www.sevenleeds.co.uk). It culminates at the London Jazz Festival on November 21. The tour is supported by Jazz Services.