Beats & Pieces Big Band

"A big band for modern times." - Jamie Cullum

Beats & Pieces are a band that happens to be big, rather than your average ‘big band’. Led by composer and conductor Ben Cottrell, they’re an extremely tight-knit bunch, growing up and developing musically individually and collectively within Manchester’s exciting scene. First playing together as Beats & Pieces in 2008, today these fourteen musicians know each other inside out socially and musically, and this familiarity is part of what sets them aside from a lot of other big bands today. Feeling at home on stages in small clubs as well as at big festivals all across Europe, they are celebrating their 10th anniversary and the release of their third album with a UK tour in January 2018.

Their music is an expression of the band’s members and their varied musical backgrounds and activities, all brought together in Ben Cottrell’s inspired writing. His compositions reflect the diversity of music that people of their generation have grown up surrounded by, and as such are influenced as much by Michael Jackson, Björk or Radiohead as they are by Duke Ellington, Gil Evans or Loose Tubes.