Speaks | Alex Paxton

Abstract

Like minimal but loads more notes like video-games but with more song like jazz but much more gay like old music but more current like yummy sweet but more stick like paint but more scratch like tapestry but filthily like prayer but more loud like loud groove and more rude like fingers and faces too but somehow more smelly like smelly things cooking with more chew and change like louder prayers that groove with like stinking-hot-pink in poo-slops but even more desperate-like than that like drums and Dream Musics

Like biting into a strawberry

Credit Jess Rose

Biography

Alex Paxton (1990), ”highly innovative...of exceptional creative imagination and musical energy, packed with life force unlike anything else” (BBC Magazine/Ivor Novello British Composer Awards) is an award-winning composer & jazz-trombonist. His scores are published by Ricordi (Berlin). 

He has been described as “A Magician of Sound...hyperkinetic rainbow-hued...joy & freedom” (Financial Times), “the most joyous sound I’ve heard in ages!” (New York Times),  "A riotous overabundance of love and rage...an extraordinary experience” (The Wire),”a system-crasher of genre...unmistakable style...highly complex, sophisticated and extremely entertaining, virtuoso ad absurdum" (Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik), and “a super nova...a brazen sensorial mash up...riot and a rainbow...brimmingly heartfelt multi sensorial, genuinely energising fizzer of a new work...super charged joy...forces us all to sit up and loosen up and buck up” (Kate Molleson, BBC New Music Show.)

Prizes include an Ivor Novello, Paul Hindemith Prize: “a Brit who defies every conceivable genre boundary…an extremely modern and future-oriented style” Ernst von Siemens Composer Prize: “Unbridled joy…sophisticated, passionate music full of pulsating energy and stylistic diversity”, Elb Philharmonie’s Claussen Simon Composition Prize, RPS Royal Philharmonic Society Prize

Alex has released three critically acclaimed albums MUSIC for BOSCH PEOPLE (Birmingham Record Company/ NMC label), iLOLLI-POP (non-classical) and HAPPY MUSIC for ORCHESTRA (Delphian), DELICIOUS (New Amsterdam) as well as many smaller releases. Each has been widely reviewed and featured in UK, USA and Europe in broad sheets and Music magazines. He is a commissioned contributor to John Zorn’s Arcana X 2021. Releases in 2025 include Delicious and Candyfolk Space Drum.