Simeon Walker - Hew

’Winnow’ is the new album from pianist & composer Simeon Walker, funded in part by Help Musicians UK. Recorded and produced by James Kenosha at Chapel Studios in Leeds, and mastered by Martyn Heyne at Lichte Studio in Berlin, this new record features a range of instruments including violin, viola, cello, double bass, drums, percussion and ondes Martenot, alongside Walker’s distinctive melancholic and evocative piano, around which everything is formed.

Composed, scored and arranged in full by Walker, this album is a musical documentation of a difficult and painful period of his life, leaving behind a way of life which was all he had ever known, reorienting around a new worldview.

Winnow refers to blowing something away until you are left with what you need; getting rid of something undesirable or unwanted; separating the wheat from the chaff. A gentler form of iconoclasm perhaps, blown calmly away on the breeze, as we try to make sense of who we are. In the course of 9 tracks and just under 40 minutes, these themes are explored through a variety of pieces featuring moments of delicate, gentle introspection to exultant textural crescendos as the composer expands on his previously released material for solo piano.