Bill Laurance & Michael League to release duo album Where You Wish You Were on ACT Music - video of single 'Sant Esteve'

In a rare break from hard touring with groove maestros Snarky Puppy, or solo piano projects, bassist Michael League and pianist Bill Laurance are to release their debut duo album in the form of Where You Wish You Were on ACT Music on 27 January. Recorded at League’s home studio in Estudi Vint in Els Prats de Rei, Catalonia, Spain the album features Laurance on piano and League on oud, fretless acoustic guitar bass, fretless baritone electric guitar, ngoni and voice on a set of co-written tunes exploring elements of jazz, oriental and Mediterranean music.

As Laurance told Jazzwise earlier this year, this duo project was formed out of an opportunity to tour between Covid lockdowns in the summer of 2020. Thus, Laurance and League hired a car and hit the road around Italy to develop this music. The result is an album that’s stripped down to a much more intimate scale, yet still has all the melodic power of their larger works as League explores multiple timbres of acoustic bass, oud and ngoni against Laurance’s lyrical piano.

"I think both Michael and I are driven by the idea to push boundaries, which is important. But this album is different," Laurance recalls. “Every single compositional idea has a lot of weight to it, and everything has very specific purpose. There was no rhythm section to hide behind, it was really just about melody and chords. And we were instinctively trying to create a place where people want to go to, that felt comforting. We feel that now, maybe more than ever, there is a need for such places.”

See the video for the first single ‘Sant Esteve (Live Version)’ below and for more info visit actmusic.lnk.to/SantEsteve