Where my first release, Paradiso e inferno, sought to challenge the trombone’s buffoonish stereotype, this second solo album seeks to embrace it.

The trombone’s ability to produce raucous glissandos has naturally drawn composers to focus on the instrument’s comic potential – its undeniable clownishness. Of course, those with a deeper understanding of the instrument, such as the composers and arranger represented on this disc, also exploit the trombone’s vast array of colours, and its capacity for nuance and beauty.

The tension between beauty and profundity on the one hand, and comedy and clownishness on the other mimics an ambivalence which exists in the art of clowning itself: the ‘tragic clown’, smiling on the outside whilst crying within. This disc embraces those contrasts embodied in the clown identity through a broad range of repertoire – pieces by established masters as well as brand new commissions – brought together under the cover of the Big Top.