Paul Morton talks to
emerging jazz keyboardist
Higgs Boson...

amed after an imaginary sub-atomic particle associated with the beginning of time (phew! Ed), Higgs Boson has exploded

onto the European jazz scene with a critically-acclaimed debut album. 'Higgs Boson' features a plethora of respected musicians from the UK jazz circuit, as well as nine original compositions which are strikingly fresh and inventive. So how would this unusual composer and keyboard virtuoso describe his music?
"Well, I've been told to call it 'adult contemporary jazz', but I personally don't think that's a very good description of it, because I always just look at it as my music. It just happens to be jazz influenced, as much as anything else. There's everything in there, from my early influences like Chopin, Debussy and Schubert, through Pink Floyd and Steely Dan, through to people like Steps Ahead and Dave Grusin. I think it's impossible to pigeonhole it, but I suppose most people might call it 'crossover' or something like that. The album has been accused of being new age, which I think is something that it isn't."
That's interesting, because the first track on the album, Penumbra, isn't even remotely new age…
"Oh no, definitely not. I wanted to start with something that was going to smack you right in the face and hat track does the trick. I like albums that do that to you and then pull you to one side, make you think a bit, pull you to the other side and make you cry and then leave you with a nice feeling at the end of it. GMTV used the first 20 seconds of Penumbra for some commercial. Someone called to say that my stuff was being played on the TV. But by the time I tripped over things trying to get to the TV, it had gone!"
So things are beginning to happen now, but how did Higgs first get into playing the piano?
"Well, I started when I was about eight. I asked for piano lessons and I was absolutely desperate to play. My mother took me around to see this crotchety old woman who insisted on rapping me across the knuckles with a hammer if I played a bum note. So I learnt Chopsticks, she seemed impressed and my mother paid for the first wave of lessons.
"By the time I had reached my teens I got turned onto people like Led Zeppelin,

(continue to Keyboard Review 2)