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Founded in 2007, Empirical is ‘still a reliable touchstone of contemporary British jazz at its most sophisticated’ today (Jazzwise).
Featuring Nathaniel Facey (alto sax), Tom Farmer (double bass) and Shaney Forbes (drums), the band settled on its long-lived quartet line-up with Lewis Wright (vibraphone) in 2008. Following Lewis’s move to the USA, the trio have adopted a more flexible line-up, frequently featuring high-calibre guest artists.
UK piano legend Jason Rebello and rising tenor sax star Alex Hitchcock joined the quartet on their 2024 release ‘Wonder is the Beginning’ (Whirlwind Recordings). Empirical’s forthcoming seventh full-length album ‘Like Lambs: To The Slaughter’ will feature pianist maestro Ivo Neame and guitar virtuoso David Preston.
The quartet had bonded through a sense of common purpose as Tom Farmer recalls: “I’d never met guys who took it so seriously. The process of studying together is really what brought us together, and we just carried on doing it”. This collective creative process has remained the bedrock of Empirical’s philosophy and unique sonic world.
Empirical’s instantly recognisable group sound is rife with raw energy and roiling emotion. ‘Empirical’s music is complex, and sometimes knotty, but they consistently engage their listeners’ emotions in a straightforward way which demands a response. That in itself is quite unusual in this kind of jazz.’ (The Blue Moment).
While oblique harmonies, layered textures and jagged, quick shifting rhythms are the signposts of Empirical’s musical territory, the band has not been afraid to explore other musical realms: a collaboration with the string ensemble Benyounes Quartet, and the attendant challenge of making strings an integral part of the Empirical sound, brought out some of the band’s most complex and lyrical writing.
Empirical’s Pop-up Jazz Lounge
Empirical’s ethos is defined by a deep commitment to risk-taking improvisation and collective music-making. In the same vein, their ‘now legendary Pop-up Jazz Lounge’ (Time Out London) represents a daring exercise in audience outreach: since 2016, Empirical have turned disused shops in train stations and shopping malls in London, Berlin, Bath, Birmingham and Cheltenham into jazz clubs for a week at a time, racking up over 150 live sets played to an appreciative audience of more than 10,000 commuters and shoppers.
For Empirical, this kind of gigging marathon has been a much-relished opportunity to develop new musical ideas during live performance and to hone the exhilarating intensity and exceptional virtuosity that their performances have become known for.
“We’ve always had huge respect for all those great bands that played together night after night.” notes Shaney Forbes. “It was pivotal to how their music developed and being able to do that ourselves allowed us to be in that same mindset of improvising and composing together as a group.’
Coming together in an environment that treats jazz as a search rather than a destination, jazz’s heyday isn’t just a musical, but also a philosophical inspiration: “That constant search for meaning in the early avant garde was really powerful and it’s essential to our band.”
Despite the intellectualism often ascribed to jazz, for Empirical, it’s ultimately all about moving, rather than impressing, their audience. As Nathaniel Facey sums it up: “It’s nice having people realise that they don’t have to ‘understand’ what we’re doing. That it’s really about what the music is communicating. Can I hear some honesty and some depth? Does it mean something to me? Does it move me?”
Awards
2016 Urban Music Awards – BEST JAZZ ACT
2016 Parliamentary Jazz Awards - BEST JAZZ ENSEMBLE
2010 MOBO awards – BEST JAZZ ACT
2008 Parliamentary Jazz Awards - BEST JAZZ ENSEMBLE
2007 EBU/European Jazz Competition – WINNER
2007 Peter Whittingham Award – WINNER
2007 Jazzwise – ALBUM OF THE YEAR
2007 Mojo – JAZZ ALBUM OF THE YEAR
