JAMES HEATHER
In 2022 Heather released his second album, Invisible Forces. The album is about becoming aware of invisible forces around us to help deepen understanding of self and our connection to the world. It’s about looking that bit deeper into things, into areas that are not instantly visible but are all around us to achieve this.
“Composing these songs gave me an anchor to feel more present in life after some troubling times and sent me on a journey to rediscover a kind of wonderment with the world. I hope the Invisible Forces universe will bring warmth to other people too.”
A step forward compositionally from his 2017 debut album Stories From Far Away On Piano, the songs are grander, deeper and broader in emotional range and are developed through a series of improvisation techniques rarely seen in the often notated world of classical music. He describes his music as “pulse music” with each track performed in a single take, with no metronome or notation. He memorised each movement, then subtly adapted adding more complexities and compositional dexterity over time before committing to the final take.
In 2023 Invisible Forces was nominated for a Libera Award in the USA for Best Classical Record. Influence wise, the music takes as much from electronic music in sensibility, post-rock in its exploration of building dynamics as it does its classical and jazz grounding. Heather proves adept in the intricacies of composition from the tender to more propulsive, hypnotictrance inducing dynamics, always highly personal and with warmth and hope in the sadness, it belies the fact the music is coming from jone acoustic instrument. Heather often (but not only) composes and releases on solo piano, an instrument he has a long love story with, but with influences filtering in from beyond the instrument.
“My current music acts as a lived reaction to music that is more machine than human, but not in opposition to it. To be minimalist in an age where you can do everything so easily, can also hold power, if not more. I am still obsessed with the compositional possibilities within a raw song.”
