“One of the finest of his generation” – Jazzwise (UK)
Kit Downes is a BBC Jazz Award and Deutscher Jazzpreis-winning musician, a Mercury Music Award nominee, and an ECM recording artist, composer and performer. He has toured internationally on both piano and pipe organ, moving freely between jazz, classical and contemporary music.
His compositions have been performed by artists and ensembles including Riot Ensemble, Abel Selaocoe, Scottish Ensemble, Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, Klang Ensemble, and others, in settings ranging from the BBC Proms to festivals such as Rewire, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and the London Contemporary Music Festival, as well as venues including Cologne Cathedral and the Toulouse Organ Festival.
Raised in Norwich, Kit was an organ scholar at St Peter Mancroft before studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he lived for two decades. Now based in Berlin, he performs solo on pipe organ and leads his own projects including ENEMY, Exhaust and Snap II, alongside a composition practice shaped by wide-ranging collaborations. Recent collaborators include Lucy Railton, Norma Winstone, Squarepusher, Bill Frisell, Susanne Sundfør, Andrew Cyrille, Sofia Jernberg, Mica Levi, Aidan O’Rourke and Sam Amidon.
Kit is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, where he also teaches. His accolades include two DownBeat Critics Poll “Rising Star” first-place awards (Organ and Keyboard) and the Paul Acket Award at the North Sea Jazz Festival. His ECM albums Obsidian, Dreamlife of Debris and Vermillion have been released to widespread critical acclaim.
