This creative project explores the music of two iconoclastic artists: drummer Paul Motian and pianist Thelonious Monk. Each left their own indelible mark on the history of jazz; Motian through his partnership with Paul Bley and Keith Jarrett, and Monk through his distinctive piano style and compositions. 

Rob Luft is an award-winning 28-year-old jazz guitarist from London whose virtuosity has been compared to that of six-string legends John McLaughlin, Al Di Meola & Paco De Lucia. He was the recipient of the 2016 Kenny Wheeler Prize from the Royal Academy of Music, and he also received the 2nd Prize in the 2016 Montreux Jazz Guitar Competition at Montreux Jazz Festival.

His debut album, “Riser”, was released on Edition Records in 2017 to widespread acclaim from the European jazz media. John Fordham wrote in The Guardian that it’s a “very sophisticated debut, but given Luft’s old-soul achievements since his early teens, we should have heard it coming”. Subsequently, on the back of the success of his first album, Rob was nominated for a string of awards – Breakthrough Act in the 2018 Jazz FM Awards, Instrumentalist of the Year in the 2020 Parliamentary Jazz Awards and Instrumentalist of the Year in the 2019 Jazz FM Awards. In May 2019, Rob was selected as a BBC New Generation Jazz Artist.

His eagerly-awaited second album, “Life is the Dancer”, was released in April 2020 on Edition Records to critical acclaim. Despite the intermittent global lockdowns of 2020, Rob made his debut appearance on the legendary German jazz label ECM Records with the album “Lost Ships, a collaborative effort with Swiss-Albanian singer Elina Duni, and this was nominated in the ‘International Album of the Year’ category in the 2021 German Jazz Prize.

Hailing from Belfast, Scott Flanigan is one of the foremost keyboard players on the Irish jazz scene. Scott has shared a stage with the likes of Van Morrison and the Ulster Orchestra, along with jazz heavyweights Rob Luft, Ant Law, Jim Mullen, Jean Toussaint and Dave O’Higgins, and is a recent nominee at the Parliamentary Jazz Awards. Scott is also a recognised composer, with recent commissions from Moving On Music and the PRS Foundation, and runs the popular Scott’s Jazz Club, a weekly jazz club in East Belfast bringing the best of Irish jazz to local audiences.

Equally at home in academia as well as the bandstand, Scott received his BMus degree from Ulster University and his MMus in Jazz Performance from Dublin Institute of Technology. Scott has recently his Ph.D in Jazz Performance at Ulster University, where he researched innovative learning methods for artist-level jazz musicians. 

Scott is also in demand as a teacher of jazz harmony and improvisation, lecturing in jazz piano at Cork School of Music, Dublin City University and at Queens University Belfast, alongside a busy teaching schedule both online and at home in Belfast.