David Brewis and Orchestra present The Soft Struggles

Field Music’s David Brewis brings his new album The Soft Struggles to the Howard Assembly Room with a ten-piece band. The ensemble features Admiral Fallow’s Sarah Hayes on flute and piano, leading lights of North East jazz, Faye MacCalman and John Pope, on saxophone/clarinet and double bass, strings from regular collaborators The Crude Tarmac Quartet, Alan Hull Award-winning singer Eve Cole and David’s brother Peter on drums.

All-acoustic and jazz-inflected, The Soft Struggles takes one step away from Field Music’s eclectic palette and instead leans into the luminous spontaneity of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and the breathy, string-laden chamber pop of Colin Blunstone’s One Year, with several tracks built around a single day of live recording at Field Music’s studio in Sunderland.

“There’s something a bit magical about a bunch of musicians together in a room being thrown in at the deep end,” says David,  “So many of my favourite records were made quickly by musicians sitting a few feet from each other, playing songs they’d never even heard before the session began. That’s what I tried to do with this album. A chord sheet, a set of lyrics, a brief chat about tempo and then, okay comrades, see you at the other side.”