Lewis Harrison - London-based soulful jazz pianist, vocalist & composer

My unique jazz fusion has a timeless yet contemporary sound.  I keep the production minimal: solo piano - acoustic or electric - forms almost the entire arrangement, yet it sounds complete, whether the texture is busy or calm, rich or sparse, simple or complex, powerful or delicate, or anything in between. I usually make simple hip-hop-style beats to frame the piano for stylistic effect, and sometimes I sing or rap, but the piano is always the chief storyteller.

In both live and recorded contexts, whether improvising or playing music that I have composed and practised, my job in this project is to "speak" the music directly, in a live, unedited way, without using technology to perfect the performance. So my artistic responsibility, in these rapidly changing times, is to fully occupy my role as a real, embodied, human musician, to communicate natural, uncontrived music with immediacy, spontaneity and flow, connected to deep feeling consciousness. 

I've experimented with soulful jazz on the piano since my teens, but struggled for a long time to share it publicly with confidence. In my youth, I was thrust into the competitive world of classical piano by my parents who disapproved of other musical genres, and that desire for parental acceptance can have lingering psychological implications. So it has been an act of happy rebellion and healing self-expression to immerse myself in the kind of music I always wanted to make, honing my skills and refining the sound, at my age. It's but a number, right? (I still do classical music, but now in my own way, using my birth name, Phil Best.)

I took the name of my Grandma, Louise Harrison, for this project because she always encouraged me to be a musical storyteller and to express myself authentically, using my own musical voice. She helped me be aware of the dangers of competition and commercialism, how they can turn music into a mere status or fashion object. I don't see music as something external at all, but as a language of inner feeling, universally understood. I love to "speak" fluently on the keys, telling stories, describing internal worlds beyond the grasp of words, and hope others might also feel the solace, catharsis and joy that this gives me.