I have had more news since the last post, I just keep forgetting to post it here. There will be more news soon.
‘AN EP’ IS A COLLECTION OF PREPOSTEROUS VERSIONS OF CLASSIC JAZZ STANDARDS, WITH GUEST APPEARANCES FROM MATT BERRY, BETH ROWLEY AND ROY CASTLE.
The band is comprised of long-term collaborators and friends, Mark Edwards, Tim Harries, Troy Miller and many others.
@thebencastle 'An Ep' by Ben Castle and the Blah Street Band, featuring #mattberry #bethrowley & #roycastle is out now. Ben Castle, CEO of Ben Castle's Major Record Label, has 30 seconds to tell you all about it. #jazz #fusion #saxophone #clarinet #theentertainer #newrelease ♬ original sound - Ben Castle
The long awaited single from the preposterous Jazz collective ‘Ben Castle and the Blah Street Band’ is finally here and features the distinctive voice of Matt Berry, explaining definitively what Jazz actually is.
When: Winter Solstice, Wednesday 21st December, live online at sunset.
Where: anywhere in Ireland and the world, running time 30 mins.
Register for free at thisispopbaby.com/book-now
The darkest time of the year is upon us. It’s time to face the sun.
GRIANSTAD is a solstice audio experience, celebrating and marking the winter solstice or “grianstad” (literally: sun stop). Join people around Ireland and the world with this meditative audio journey at sunset, guiding you to greet the solstice, in a mode of healing reflection.
With an original soundscape composed by Jane Arnison and Julie Fogarty, and original music by MayKay, Ben Castle, and Adam Matthews, GRIANSTAD calls on us to connect with ourselves, each other, and this potent time of year in a collective audio ritual.
This is a free event, registration required, for people (aged 12+) to enjoy with family, friends, or alone, on speaker or headphones, at sunset on December 21st.
Katharine Timoney’s New EP, produced by Ben and Mark Edwards is out now!
Click the album to find it on Spotify
Ben wrote the music for Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story with Paul Pilot for Sony Pictures, directed by Emmy nominee Ryan Suffern and five-time Academy Award nominee Frank Marshall. It features the Marsalis Family, Herbie Hancock, Bruce Springsteen, Gregory Porter, Jimmy Buffett, Katy Perry, Earth, Wind & Fire, and many others.
The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival presented by Shell, aka “Jazz Fest,” is the signature annual music and cultural event of the city and has been called America’s greatest festival. Celebrating the music, food, and arts and crafts of all of Louisiana since 1970, Jazz Fest is an essential showcase of the rich heritage of the region, and hundreds of thousands attend the event each year. Local music heroes are joined on 14 stages by some of the most important figures in entertainment, highlighting the connections between Louisiana culture and the world.
JAZZ FEST: A NEW ORLEANS STORY weaves together live performances and interviews from the 50th anniversary of the iconic festival, featuring some of the biggest names in the music industry, along with a wealth of archival documentary footage from the past half century. This film not only captures the Festival in all of its beauty and glory, but also delves deep into the rich culture of The Big Easy.
Ben will be the musical director for Murmuration (live and live-streamed) at the National Concert Hall in Dublin on 24th October 2021. Part of Una Mullally and Conner Habib’s exciting Utopia season, it will be a live musical performance emerging in the moment, as a group of musicians come together as a collective to find their way to and through songs and sounds as they are conjured live on stage. This one-off experimental process rooted in risk, trust, improvisation and potential, asks the artists and the audience to cross a threshold, and see what happens.
The evening will feature Saint Sister’s Gemma Doherty, folk star Daoiri Farrell, the remarkable contemporary classical pianist Izumi Kimura, Rory Friers of rock experimentalists And So I Watch You From Afar and many more to be announced.
For more info and to buy tickets for the live or live-streamed show, click here
#Refractions #NCHat40
A three minute sax solo in a modern day pop song? You're welcome world.
Ben wrote the brass arrangements for ‘Mister Holland’ and ‘Long List Of Troubles’ from Gregory Porter’s new album ‘All Rise’, out now on Blue Note.
Ben and his bass clarinet are featured in Alex Baranowski’s soundtrack to Staged on BBC.
David Tennant and Michael Sheen star as two actors whose West End play has been put on hold due to Covid-19, but whose director has persuaded them to carry on rehearsing online.
The whole series is up on the BBC iPlayer now
Next in the series of jazz legends playing iconic British TV theme tunes, we have Ray Charles, Chet Baker, John Coltrane & Acker Bilk playing The Sweeney.
If you leave a human in lockdown for long enough, they will eventually do a mashup of So What and Blind Date.
It’s obvious to everyone that it was the way Ben played the saxophone on ‘(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again’ that won Elton John and Bernie Taupin the Oscar but, even though he checks the post every day, his Oscar still hasn’t arrived.
Ben features on one track on both of these new releases from Shri and Dr Rubberfunk. ‘The Letter’ was produced by Bugge Wesseltoft and is released on his Jazzland label. ‘My Life At 45’ is a follow up to Dr Rubberfunk’s ‘My Life At 33’ album 12 years ago.
If you’ve been wondering whether Ben would make a good rap star, this advert should take away the element of doubt.
The second series of Sex Education is out now on Netflix. Ben has worked a lot with composer Oli Julian and has played on many of his TV and film soundtracks, including Plebs, How To Build a Girl, Motherland, Cuckoo, Episodes and Timewasters, but his flute, clarinet, bass clarinet and saxophones are featured heavily in both series of Sex Education.
Ben wrote some tunes with Cian Boylan for the ‘The Last Right’, written and directed by Aoife Crehan.
Ben wrote a few arrangements for the Matthew Herbert Big Band album ‘The State Between Us’, scheduled for release on 29th March, the same day that Brexit is scheduled to happen.
Ben co-wrote the Ceol (music) for this Vodafone Ireland fógra (advert) with Joel Hartman at Soundtree (fuaime-crann).
Ben is featured heavily on Matthew Herbert’s soundtrack to the Oscar winning film ‘A Fantastic Woman’