Trio HLK
Trio HLK is pianist and composer Rich Harrold, eight-string guitarist Ant Law, and drummer Richard Kass.
Rich Harrold’s compositional approach encompasses deconstruction and recomposition as well as pure composition; his music is driven primarily by rhythmic techniques, and by creating environments of ambiguity, whether rhythmic, harmonic or sonic.
Guitarist Ant Law plays a bespoke extended range electric guitar with eight strings and a variety of effects; a wealth of influences from jazz, heavy metal and elsewhere shine through in his playing.
Drum virtuoso Richard Kass is a powerful polyrhythmic engine whose multi-limbic facility affords him a wealth of textures and modes of expression; he executes rhythms at multiple tempi simultaneously, and his playing often draws comparison to electronica and computer-generated music.
Their 2016 debut recording Standard Time features spectral jazz pioneer Steve Lehman on alto saxophone, and global percussion phenomenon Dame Evelyn Glennie on percussion. Most of the pieces of the album deconstruct a popular standard from the jazz canon, using its constituent parts to build intricate new pieces. The recording was met with consistently excellent press, including features in Gramophone Magazine’s “Critics’ Choice - the Best Recordings of 2018”, Bandcamp’s “The Best Jazz of 2018”, and Jazzwise’s “The Shape of Jazz to Come”.
Trio HLK began touring the album in March 2018, playing a mixture of trio concerts and quartet concerts with Dame Evelyn Glennie; most recently HLKG completed a European tour culminating with a sold-out concert in the Grand Hall of the St Petersburg Philharmonia.
“…the ensemble’s willingness to travel far and wide - beyond more obvious and generic accents (and also way beyond traditional concepts of the jazz trio) - marks them out as true innovators and makes Standard Time a truly remarkable album.”
- Gramophone Magazine
“…urgent, elegant, dizzying, serene … and maybe unline anything you’ve heard before.”
- London Jazz News
“…the festival had one extraordinary performance that was in a class all of its own: Trio HLK’s collaboration with percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie was an intense combination of complex musical ideas and virtuoso musicianship.”
- Tony Benjamin, Jazzwise
“…As a start to the day it raised the bar enormously and while there was much entertainment to be had nothing else came close.”- Bristol 247
“Their deconstruction of jazz classics could easily have sounded mannered, but instead I found it genuinely complex, uncompromising, at times very beautiful, and above all deeply engaging. I’d never heard anything quite like it (a novel experience at a jazz gig) and was immediately hooked.”- Steven Osborne
“A rocking, urgent musical kaleidoscope. Their compositions are highly evolved … they’re at the top of the class when it comes to a stringent application of a demanding but rewarding style.”
- Rob Adams, Herald Scotland“
…four musicians at the top of their game, working together to push the boundaries of rhythm and sound.”- Henley Standard