Rock legend: Newham band’s track is ‘private passion’

Former Police drummer Stewart Copeland has said a piece of music recorded by a musician in Newham is one of his ‘private passions’.

The composer and author, who now writes film scores, named a track recorded by ensemblebash as one of his ‘Private Passions’ in an interview broadcast on Radio 3 recently.

Percussion quartet ensemblebash was founded in 1992 by Newham-based musician Chris Brannick who was recently-appointed Head of Strategy at the Newham Academy of Music. He has been performing, recording and touring the world with them ever since.

The piece was written by Stewart Copeland for the band’s second album in 1995 and led to ensemblebash working extensively with him over the next 10 years. Chris also provided percussion arrangements and played on Stewart’s Grammy-nominated album ‘Orchestralli’ and was invited to his Los Angeles home to provide additional percussion on the album.

Stewart Copeland, in addition to his legendary drum playing on such tracks as ‘Roxanne’, ‘Message In A Bottle’, ‘Every Breath You Take’ and ‘Walking On The Moon’ is now a composer for films and TV, writing scores for films such as Rumblefish, Wall Street, and Highlander II.

‘Private Passions’ is a weekly music discussion programme broadcast almost every Sunday in the UK.

Chris said: “It’s a huge honour to be referenced by Stewart, who is every drummer’s hero. I loved working with him, and one of the highlights of my career so far is the concert we did together in Rome to an audience of half a million – truly amazing.”

Stewart Copeland said: “ensemblebash are four eccentric English percussionists who are my hit squad whenever I do stuff in Europe. They have a strange act that is hard to describe – kind of Blue Man Group meets Debussy by way of Steve Reich.”