Alex Paxton is an award-winning composer & jazz-trombonist. His scores are published by Ricordi (Berlin).
He has been described as “A Magician of Sound...hyperkinetic rainbow-hued...joy & freedom” (Financial Times), “the most joyous sound I’ve heard in ages!” (New York Times), "A riotous overabundance of love and rage...an extraordinary experience” (The Wire),”a system-crasher of genre...unmistakable style...highly complex, sophisticated and extremely entertaining, virtuoso ad absurdum" (Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik), and “a super nova...a brazen sensorial mash up...riot and a rainbow...brimmingly heartfelt multi sensorial, genuinely energising fizzer of a new work...super charged joy...forces us all to sit up and loosen up and buck up” (Kate Mollison BBC New Music Show.)
His music has been awarded: an Ivor Novello, the Paul Hindemith Prize ("a Brit who defies every conceivable genre boundary…an extremely modern and future-oriented style”), the Ernst von Siemens Composer Prize (“Unbridled joy…sophisticated, passionate music full of pulsating energy and stylistic diversity”), the Elb Philharmonie’s Claussen Simon Composition Prize, RPS Royal Philharmonic Society Prize, Dankworth Jazz Prize, Leverhume Art Scholarship with London Philharmonic Orchestra , the Harriet Cohen Memorial Music Award.
Alex has released three critically acclaimed albums MUSIC for BOSCH PEOPLE (Birmingham Record Company/ NMC label), iLOLLI-POP (non-classical) and HAPPY MUSIC for ORCHESTRA (Delphian) as well as many smaller releases. Each has been widely reviewed and featured in UK, USA and Europe in broad sheets (NYT, Guardian, Times, Financial Times etc) and Music magazines (The Wire. Quitus, Bandcamp, Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, Crescendo,Positionen, Point of Departure etc.) He is a commissioned contributor to John Zorn’s Arcana X 2021.
His music is frequently performed internationally by many of the worlds leading orchestras, ensembles and festivals: London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), WDR Symphony Orchestra, NDR Elb Philharmonie Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Modern, Klang Forum Wien, London Sinfonietta, AskSchöenberg, Re-Mix Ensemble, Riot Ensemble, Explore Ensemble, Load Bang Ensemble, Sitron Sinfionetta, Ensemble Klang, London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO), National Youth Orchestra GB, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (BSO) Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain, NDR Big Band, WDR Big Band, BBC proms, Bang on a Can Long Play, Paris Festival d'Automne, MearzMusik, Guadeamus, ECLAT, impulse Graz, Now essen, Klangspuren swartz, Wigmore hall, Klammer Klang, Making Music (UK), Hyper Duo, National Youth Jazz Orchestra (UK) NYJO, Listen-Pony, Aldeburgh Festival. “Alex Paxton's fascinating score impressed me from the very first moment...the notes literally jumped out at me from the score; it was clear that this was a unique compositional voice, combining a complex, almost chaotic sensibility with a charming grounding in folk tradition.” conductor Alan Gilbert
He has written six operas hosted by English National Opera and Helios Collective, Tête à Tête opera festival, Second Movement Opera.
As a jazz trombone soloist “Paxton is a monster improviser” (Bandcamp), Alex has performed concerto-like pieces of his own with WDR Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta, Asko:Schoenberg, Riot Ensemble, Ensemble Klang, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO), & ensemble x.y. “secretly one of the greatest trombone players in the world” BBC Music Magazine.
He is founder of Dreammusics ensemble and performs regularly with pioneering improvisers (eg: Charlotte Keeffe, Steve Noble). “meticulously scored…seems to change with every bar, enfolding bite-size pieces of classic minimalism, brass brand tradition, electronic noise, & video game plasticity..intensely virtuosic and giddily joyful. electronically slathered trombone…connects his garrulous attack to the most extroverted playing of George Lewis & Roswell Rudd..." Bandcamp Daily Best Contemporary Classical.
Alex has written extensively for musicians in community settings including, innovative ways of writing for young instrumentalists and singers in a post-Roald Dahl world of new-music. including: NOGGIN and the WHALE (Massed forces including 500 young instrumentalists and singes), Fly Like a Kitchen, Muffin, Pudding Tummy and The smelling test.
He is professorial composition staff at Trinity Laban Conservatoire and has worked as lead-composition tutor (and workshop leader) on the National Youth Orchestra GB, he has taught/ lectured at composition and improvisation at conservatories including, RAM, GSMD, RCM, The Royal Conservatoire (NL) (and multiple universities).
Alex studied as a scholar at Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music.
Alex is an endorsed solo artist with Michael Rath Trombones.
This biography is for information only and should not be reproduced.
“Scrunchy Touch Sweetly to Fall (Kite n Finger run)” - Ensemble Modern
Frankfurt, July 2024
“British composer/improviser who'd wowed me at the Long Play festival in Brooklyn in May. His Scrunchy Touch Sweetly to Fall (Kite n Finger run) was vibrant! playful! Technicolor! ...enormous arpeggios in a cartoon ballet...wonderfully fresh.”
Kurt Gottschalk, Bachtrack
Happy Music for Orchestra - Delphian Records
released April 2023
"A Magician of Sound.
classical-jazz sonic blasts ...violently overwhelming...I was seduced, and am not the only one... digesting Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five band recordings, John Zorn’s Downtown experimentalism, Harrison Birtwistle’s brash blocks of sound, music of the Celtic oral tradition, Hildegard von Bingen’s medieval chants — and it all comes out, sometimes at once...carefully constructed ...forbiddingly dense it is balanced by its playfulness... hyperkinetic rainbow-hued...its joy and freedom."
Financial Times
"Paxton will Make your ears ping..brings brightly coloured, loopy joy to our ears..sweet energy & frantic humour...It’s jazzy & noisy & oddly serious."
Fiona Maddocks, The Guardian
"an opportunity to revisit that early life carnival of sensation, to suspend the imperatives of orderly and goal-orientated progress and luxuriate in immediacy...wild imaginings...Paxton forges structures that miraculously hold together, while threatening constantly to burst apart from the sheer exuberance of his tempestuous orchestration...the orchestra seem to skip, hop or spin as the mood of the instant demands....melodic fragments flitter like incidental patterns forming across the brilliantly tinted surface of a swarming continuum.... conceptually sophisticated as well as irrepressible in spirit."
The Wire
"a manic, full-frontal, maximalist music, coming at you like a freshly-unleashed tiger, with an energy that is inspiring & exhausting...African water drumming, free jazz, Ligeti, Roobarb and Custard...brave pursuit of a self-made vision...seriously intoxicating music"
The Arts Desk
"Playful entities... Over the course of numerous commissions and three studio albums Paxton’s has stood in defiance of traditional stylistic boundaries...uncompromising intensity...central to Paxton’s joyously maximalist aesthetic is an almost childlike innocence and playfulness present in so much of his work"
Van Magazine
“...some of the most genuinely extraordinary orchestral music you’ll ever have the good fortune to experience....staggeringly happy...unstoppable, continue-at-all-costs need to sing. Melody is literally everywhere... exuberant kindred spirits letting rip with the simultaneous elegance and zeal of football supporters....a demented dawn chorus...ultimate experience for the aural senses – it’s undeniably a superabundance, yet it’s also an unbelievable, glorious treat"
5 against 4
“Chaotic, frenzied and maximised sensation is the order of the day for Alex Paxton’s gloriously childlike...cartoonish world of blinding colour, elastic movement and warm humour...frenzied action...ecstatic surges and sudden lulls evoke a child gradually tiring themselves out with play...meticulous, finger-breaking arrangements. Paxton presents tension between raw, fleeting sensation and the restrictive geometry of adulthood...rich emotional expression...gorgeous, yearning melody...the difficulty of saying goodbye to a loved one is conveyed with moving realism. In focusing on raw sensation, Happy Music For Orchestra’s cartoonish character proves a disarmingly naturalistic, powerful means of expressing real emotion.”
The Quietus
“Car-Pig” (from Zubin Kanga’s “Machine Dreams” on NMC Records)
released 2023
"Beauty comes in all shapes...genuine musical worth topped by the manic onslaught of Alex Paxton’s Car-Pig"
The Times
"Fantastic delirium...An effervescence of day glow energy that just can’t be resisted” BBC 3 New Music Show, Tom service “sugar-sweet hyperpop-infused sounds break loose in a manic and overwhelming stream of consciousness”
All About Jazz
"Relentlessly playful...a manic frenzy of sampled instruments careening like a demented merry-go-round on fast forward.”
The Wire Magazine
"Paxton's full-throttle high-energy compositional style is totally unique...Imagine if the child of Frank Zappa & Bjork studied with John Zorn and then decided to do their own thing anyway...a vital, exciting and exceptional”
Florence Anderson, Planet Hugill
Ernst von Siemens Composer Prize
2023
“Unbridled joy…sophisticated, passionate music full of pulsating energy and stylistic diversity.“
Jakob Böttcher
ilolli-pop - nonclassical records
Released October 2022
"Fantastic delirium...An effervescence of day glow energy that just can’t be resisted"
BBC 3 New Music Show, Tom Service
"wonderfully imaginative, manically energetic world of Alex Paxton, music that never seems to sit still, taking us on journeys across myriad brilliant textures and timbres…imaginative and madcap…terrific roller-coaster journey"
Planet Hugill
"absurdly colorful…delirious sound universe of Alex Paxton is a staggering experience, vaguely frightening, demanding and joyful at the same time: abundant, teeming, teeming, overflowing, luxuriant, it resembles these wanderings of nature in an accidentally and exceptionally favorable environment, so nourished that 'they escape any rule or constraint - not to mention the law of gravity.….a hair-raising disc."
Crescendo Magazine
"uncompromising intensity"
Van Magazine
"play solo that made the eyes sting and then use his slide to make farting noises and knock over pints on the front tables…’religious, calm and imposing accents to savage, orgiastic outburst”…In the hands of a master like composer / improvisor Alex Paxton, the trombone does all this and more. cheerful chaos – more Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em than Hellzapoppin’….crepuscular souls to perfection…Bone of his Bone Extraordinary."
The Wire
"a manic, full-frontal, maximalist music, coming at you like a freshly-unleashed tiger, with an energy that is inspiring...good-natured bedlam... spectacular multi-movement work commissioned by Ensemble Modern: it made me think of Harrison Birtwistle but with a broad grin instead of dour frown...Sometimes Voice of Aphex Twin...Corn-Crack Dreams of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five transported in a time-machine...seriously intoxicating music"
The Arts Desk
"Music for Bosch People" - Gaudeamus Composition Prize
September 2022
“Fun and really rich, varied, dense, maximalist, fun, joyful and unafraid.”
“Sometimes Voices”- Ivor Novello British Composer Awards - Winner Best Small Chamber Composition
London, 2021
"a highly innovative work of exceptional creative imagination and musical energy, packed with life force unlike anything else.”
Ivors Academy Jury
MUSIC for BOSCH PEOPLE - NMC records / Birmingham Record Company
Released April 2021
"In a dark time this music will make you smile.....antic experimentalism.....manic contrast heavy.....This is the most joyous sound I’ve heard in ages!"
New York Times
"Classical-jazz sonic blasts meets video-game bleeps meets noise music...
violently overwhelming...I was seduced, and am not the only one."
Financial Times
"Paxton, Like Hieronymous Bosch, is one of those rare artists who manage to make a virtue of excess.
The turbulent and joyful spirit of his music bubbles up irrepressibly in his trombone playing, and courses torrentially though his flamboyantly unpredictable compositions. . .Surfing the crest of their exuberance is an extraordinary experience."
The Wire Magazine
"Paxton is a system-crasher of genre, who merges jamming video game soundtracks, musical overtures, virtuoso chamber music and jazz improv into an unmistakable style...highly complex, sophisticated and extremely entertaining, virtuoso ad absurdum"
Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik
"Fun and really rich, varied, dense, maximalist, fun, joyful and unafraid."
Gaudeamus Composition Prize 2022
"feels like an evacuation of something fundamental and urgent…bleeding chunks of something greater than sum of their parts; a compositional outpouring that started its inexorable flow sometime ago and will surely continue to spill on over after the neat boundaries of a mere CD’s runtime have been met."
Tempo Magazine
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