Kit Downes is a BBC Jazz Award and Deutscher Jazzpreis winning, Mercury Music Award nominated, ECM recording artist, composer and performer. He has toured the world playing piano and church organ with leading artists from the classical and jazz idioms, and his compositions have been performed by Riot Ensemble, Abel Selaocoe, Klang Ensemble, Heloise Werner, Scottish Ensemble, Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, St Paul’s Orchestra in Minneapolis, and HR Radio Band in Frankfurt, at venues such as the Cologne Dom, Rewire Festival, BBC Proms, Toulouse Organ Festival, Stavanger Konserthus, London Contemporary Music Festival and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

An organ scholar at St Peter Mancroft in Norwich whilst growing up, he graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he lived for 20 years. He is now living in Berlin, and performs solo pipe organ and with own ensembles (ENEMY, Exhaust and Snap II) while developing a composition practice that is informed by, and inspired by, his broad ranging collaborators. These artists include Lucy Railton, Norma Winstone, Squarepusher, Bill Frisell, Susanne Sundfjør, Andrew Cyrille, Sofia Jernberg, Mica Levi, Aidan O’Rourke and Sam Amidon.

Kit holds a Fellowship at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he himself studied and now teaches. He has twice been awarded 1st place in Downbeat’s Critics Poll Rising Star for Organ and Keyboard categories respectively, been awarded the Paul Acket Award at North Sea Festival, and his ECM records ‘Obsidian’, ‘Dreamlife of Debris’ and ‘Vermillion’ have been released to critical acclaim.