Dan Whitehouse has featured on these pages before, last, with his album Dreamland/Tomorrow. He demonstrated a more experimental approach that took his creativity and self-expression to new heights on that album. He clearly had a vision of where he wanted to head on that double album, calling upon John Elliott (The Little Unsaid), Eric Lane (Joan as Police Woman), composer Richard J. Birkin, and BBC Jazz Award-winning Saxophonist Xhosa Cole to join him.
In the Global Music Match programme earlier this year, Dan again found himself in like-minded company as he teamed up with hammered dulcimer player Max ZT of House of Waters – “One of the most original bands on the planet,” NY Music Daily.
Max ZT is a lauded innovator, described by NPR as the “Jimi Hendrix of Hammered Dulcimer”. Although he takes his roots from Irish folk music, his bio describes how he has created complex and beautiful compositions and expanded his influence through studying in Senegal with the Cissoko griot family and to India, where he received a grant to study under the santoor master Pandit Shivkumar Sharma.
Introduced via the international Global Music Match project in May 2021, for which they were chosen to represent the music of their country from thousands of applicants, the pair struck up a fruitful remote relationship. With Max in Brooklyn and Dan finding himself in lockdown in Japan, they fed off each other’s unique creativity to create a compelling and innovative sound, interweaving poetry and song with music that fused their multi-cultural roots and traditions.
Across six dates, Max’s first international solo tour, these two stand-out musicians will be performing music from both their most recent solo projects – Dan from latest release Dreamland Tomorrow (Reveal Records) and Max ZT from his forthcoming debut solo album Daybreak (Six Degrees Records) – and the compositions from their joint EP ‘Ten Steps’, interweaving poetry and song with music which fuses multi-cultural roots and traditions. Ten Steps will be available exclusively from these live shows.
Watch the accompanying video for EP title track Ten Steps below, also out Song of the Day, it is both extraordinary and beautiful. I strongly recommend you try and see this tour if you can, it will be one of a kind.
Max ZT & Dan Whitehouse UK Tour
November
Wednesday 24th – International Anthony Burgess Foundation Manchester
Thursday 25th – Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
Friday 26th – The Sound Lounge, Sutton
Sunday 28th Ashburton Arts Centre South Devon
Monday 29th Glass Studio St George’s Bristol
Tuesday 30th The Plough Arts Centre @ St Anne’s Barnstaple North Devon
Tickets via: https://www.dan-whitehouse.com/live/
https://www.maxzt.com/ | https://www.dan-whitehouse.com/