Roger Eno

British musician Roger Eno belongs to a tradition of making music that is rooted in a time when it was expected that musicians should be able to compose, play, sing and touch hearts. His work as a composer, musician, and sound artist represents today’s equivalent of the troubadour, a maker of sounds that arise from impressions of the natural world and mankind’s place in it. The flat landscapes and vast skies of Eno’s native East Anglia have left profound impressions on his own compositions and solo albums, while the breadth and openness of his work is reflected in the visual installations he has created to accompany his live performances. His versatility as a multi-instrumentalist and singer has long supported his collaborations with others, his brother Brian Eno not least among them. Roger Eno was born in Woodbridge, Suffolk, in 1959. He played his first tune on a school cornet and made rapid progress in euphonium lessons, before rescuing an old upright piano and teaching himself to play it. At sixteen, he enrolled at the Colchester Institute School of Music, where his appetite for composition was fuelled by encouragement from his tuba teacher and immersion in the music of French Impressionism and English Pastoralism. These evocative soundworlds sowed the seeds of Eno’s personal brand of minimalism which, while stripped of artifice, is always rooted in the expression of intense emotions and tonal beauty. After college, Eno made his way in London by playing piano in jazz bars and busking, but he soon returned to Colchester to work as a music therapist. He first collaborated with his brother Brian in 1983 on Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks, conceived as the soundtrack to the original version of Al Reinert’s documentary For All Mankind. Voices, Eno’s Satie-inspired debut solo album, followed in 1985, its mix of acoustic piano and electronics ruled by the gentlest of aesthetics. Between Tides introduced a greater variety of styles and range of instrumental sounds, without loss of gentleness. Eno’s discography grew throughout the 1990s and early 2000s with further solo albums, from Lost in Translation and The Flatlands to Fragile, Anatomy, and Dust of Stars, and collaborations with, among others, singer-songwriter Peter Hammill, multi-instrumentalist Pier Luigi Andreoni and electronic music group The Orb. His music has also reached a wide public through its use in films such as 9½ Weeks, Trainspotting, and The Jacket. Mixing Colours, his first duo album with Brian Eno, evolved over the course of 15 years. Its finely crafted tracks are imbued with the peace and stillness that are essential to the composer’s work.