Many people will know the name Bill Bruford and it isn’t just restricted to those of us in their middle forties or early fifties who remember him as a member of Yes or King Crimson, or perhaps many of the sessions Bill has managed to notch up over the years, most notably for Genesis for whom he briefly drummed alongside Phil Collins when Phil took over the vocalists spot vacated by Peter Gabriel. These days Bill fronts the jazz quartet Earthworks and in addition to playing the odd session Bill seems more than happy playing dates as far afield as Japan and South America to enthusiastic jazz audiences and music lovers in general.
Like most artists of his generation Bill Bruford has reached the point where he can keep most aspects of his career both past and present under his control and with that in mind he has recently launched two record label imprints: Summerfold Records and Winterfold Records.
If Summerfold covers the material recorded by Bill’s current band Earthworks, Winterfold will address the material recorded by the Band Bruford and Bill’s collaboration with another former Yes man Patrick Moraz. The label has re-issued the three studio albums recorded by Bruford (Feels Good To Me, One Of A Kind and Gradually Going Tornado) and the live album The Bruford Tapes. The two albums Bill recorded with Patrick Moraz (Music For Piano And Drums and Flags) have also been re issued through Winterfold.
Again, as Bill Bruford said in 2003 at the launch of the label: “Winterfold is going to do the colder guitar music that I did generally from 1977 when I started releasing records of my own through to Earthworks in about 1985/6. That comprises two groups primarily that I ran in those days one was under my own name called Bruford and the second was a duo with a Swiss pianist called Patrick Moraz. The group was Moraz Bruford and we released a couple of CDs then too. The Bruford group really started with what we thought was fancy instrumental rock. We thought we could take the power of rock music further with some more interesting harmony. So that is what Winterfold is for, primarily the Bruford music and the Moraz Bruford music.“
As with the Introduction To Summerfold release this album will act as a primer for the Winterfold catalogue and presents the other side of the coin as it were to Bill Bruford's musical achievements over the last twenty-eight years.
