HAPPY 2017!

HAPPY NEW YEAR, you wonderful Patrons of mine!

2016 was certainly a year full of challenges on Planet Earth, both great and small... but it's a year for which I am stupendously grateful! There's such a huge amount to reflect on, and such a lot of it was made possible by you, my Patrons.

Here are a few highlights for me:

• In My Room was recorded, mixed, mastered and released into the world! My debut album... and the first time I have released original music to the world. Four videos for four singles were created and released on the first day of every month between April and July – entirely funded by YOU. In My Room reached #1 on the Contemporary Billboard Chart, and #1 on the Jazz Charts in 23 countries on the day of its release! And has since been nominted for two Grammy awards... Bonkers.
• The launch of the first #IHarmU campaign! This has truly changed my life. Spawning nearly 130 melodies from pledging Patrons, I have been able to fund the whole of In My Room's release AND 6 months of solid touring with my One Man Show, solely because of #IHarmU. It remains a source of enormous joy for me, and the 80+ melodies remaining will sustain me for many months to come.
• Approximately 85 shows with the One-Man-Show-Creature, all around the world! We've been to Indonesia, Phillipines, Japan, Ireland, France, Germany, Prague, Italy, Slovakia, Romania, Austria, Swizerland, Holland, Georgia, Poland; San Francisco, Denver, Monterey, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Texas, Boston, Washington DC, Nashville, Atlanta... and England! To name but a few. What astounding adventures. So wonderful to meet so many of you along the way!
• 'In The Real Early Morning' at the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall with the Metropole Orkest... This has to be a life highlight for me.
• A total of $75,000 was raised through Patreon in 2016!! Every penny went directly into funding the launch of In My Room, and the In My Room World Tour with the One-Man Show. How extroardinary is that? A living, breathing music industry. No record deal, no contract... just wonderful YOU. And we're only just getting started!

Here's a little bit of what my 2017 is looking like (so far).

January is a month of planning and creating for me. I haven't had more than a week or so at home for a long time, so I'm looking forward to unpacking and repacking my creative mind and spending some time planting some seeds. This means returning to IHarmUs starting from today (there are 80+ melodies still to harmonise!!!) – can't wait to share all of these with everybody! They're still my favourite thing ever. I'm also working on new music – which I'll be able to bring to full fruition in the Autumn – but you'll be hearing lots of this over the next few months in the Groove Bank and the Monthly Hangouts.

Come February, I'm back on the road with a fully re-enforced One Man Show Creature! I'll also be stopping by California for the Grammy's :-) This is the start of the second half of the In My Room Solo World Tour which began on July 1st 2016, and will run up until Summer 2017. I'll be playing gigs after that, of course, but come September I'll be focussing mostly on the new music I'm planting seeds for in these next couple of weeks. Can't wait.

Between months of touring and creating, I'll be working towards the Harmoniser 2.0, with a whole variety of new features which I've been dying to design and build with Ben at MIT, such as freeze manipulation, aftertouch, add_hajanga, arpeggiators, ring modulators... loads of stuff. There are lots more potential ideas in the works, invention-wise, for which I'll be planting seeds – including Jacobean robotic instruments, Digital Harmonic Intelligence, an #IHarmU app, gestural harmonic control, a Vocaliser instrument built entirely out of vocal samples, 3D visual harmonic interactive environments... and tons more.

On top of all that, I'm also beginning to put together a band! I'll be doing a great deal of collaboration this year, of many different flavours ... immensely exciting.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for all of your love and support this year. So much is simply impossible without you, and I can't begin to explain how much you have enabled, and will continue to enable, in my creative process! Here's to sharing a glorious, full-hearted, creative, joyous and liberating 2017 with all of you :-)

Loads of love from London town!

JC