UK based multi-award winning Composer, Producer and Bassist Daniel Casimir is set to return to this year’s Cheltenham Jazz Festival where fans will get a rare opportunity to see him perform with his big band. A master at his craft, Casimir produces exceptional arrangements that make him ‘an artist to watch’ within the UK Jazz scene and beyond. In 2024, Casimir released his latest album Balance. The project delivers a 7-song masterpiece which features some rising stars and phenomenal musicians as collaborators.

Over the years. Casimir has played across various iconic venues such as The Royal Albert Hall, Ronnie Scott’s and The Jazz Café. He has also played at many festivals including Cheltenham Jazz Festival.

This year at Cheltenham Jazz Festival, as well as playing as part of Nubya Garcia’s band, Daniel Casimir Big Band will be playing a headlining show on Saturday May 3rd at The Parabola Arts Centre Cheltenham Ladies’ College – 8.30 pm.

In this interview, Daniel Casimir and I discuss his upcoming performance at Cheltenham Jazz Festival, where he plans to play songs off of his latest album Balance. Daniel tells us of his history with the Festival and his current teaching role at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. He shares his love for writing for big bands and how the pandemic led him to work on orchestration and what it was like releasing an album in that time. He shares his passion for Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club and how it holds a sacred place within the Jazz community.

Hello Daniel – how are you today? How has your week been?

It’s been alright. It’s like, so far so good. It’s Monday today, so I haven’t ruined it. So yeah!

Have you got a lot planned?

I teach up at Birmingham (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire) so I’m going to be heading up there later this week, and I’m going to play at the 606 with Binker Golding, so that should be fun.

Nice and are you all ready for Cheltenham Jazz Festival?

Yeah, I am. I’m thinking about maybe bringing in a couple of new charts. I can’t promise, but, um, but I think that’s, that’s my intention.

What else can you let us know about the show, because you’re bringing in your big band. So songs off the ‘Balance’ album I assume?

Yeah, it is going to be pretty much all of the songs off the album, you know. I knew when I put this project together that it was going to be a rare event that I will be able to have the entire big band to perform. So any opportunities to perform with them, with the big band, I always treat it as on one off. So, yeah, we’re just gonna come and play the music and yeah, hopefully people enjoy it!

So you must have that process in mind then when you’re writing, when you’re composing music, you must have in mind the live setting?

Yeah, so Cheltenham will be one of the very few places where the big band will be playing in its entirety, there is like a quintet version. We play the music, but it has, it has a different essence to it compared to the big band, and it provides just a different option to play in smaller venues.

You have played Cheltenham Jazz Festival before, haven’t you?

So, Cheltenham Jazz Festival was actually one of the very first festivals that I ever did. I was at Birmingham Conservatoire between 2008 and 2012 (as a student) and we did a project with Chris Potter off his album called ‘A Song For Anyone’. We played (Cheltenham Jazz Festival), and quite interestingly enough, it was like an orchestral jazz album, not like a traditional big band. I think there was a bassoon there and other sort of classical instruments within that band. It’s kind of like a nice little homecoming to have done that festival, initially as a student and now (this year) as a professional musician.

That is amazing. And you said you teach now yourself. You must get proud moments?

So I started teaching at Birmingham Conservatoire last year. I’m enjoying being in that sort of mentoring role, and actually to kind of come at it from a different angle. I sort of know how they’re feeling, and this is how they need to navigate it from an ex-student and professional point of view. They’re all really good. They are all incredible students.

Do you play any other instruments other than the bass? And how much dedication did it take for you to get to the level you are?

I play like composer piano, so you never see me on a piano at a gig, but I kind of know my way around it enough to write some tunes. So yeah, mainly electric and double bass. I used to play steel pans, like way back when I was, like 16. The bass, I’ve been playing double bass since I started at Birmingham Conservatoire in 2008.

Is there an instrument that you have a desire to play and just haven’t got around to learning it?

I think I would like to actually play piano properly. I think part of me wants to learn how to play a little bit given the fact that I’m writing for so many wind instruments, it would be nice to have that new level of understanding. Yeah, and I semi want to play guitar, just so I can battle those internal demons of it having too many strings, and I can manage it. Flute has been bugging me a bit actually. Quite often you get those, those double bass jokes that you should have played flute when people see me carrying my double bass around. So it would be nice to say “I actually do play the flute as well yeah” haha.

How do you put a set list together? So you say you’re going to play most of the songs off the album Balance. Do the tracks tend to be longer because you have the ability to kind of like freestyle with them a bit? Or make new arrangements specifically for the live shows?

Yeah, so with putting an album together, especially with the new popularity of vinyl, you kind of have to bear in mind how long you can make the album to fit on one side of a vinyl. So it’s nice to be able to stretch out in a live setting.

You said earlier on about writing for the strings and other instruments. When the musicians come into the studio, do they ever have room to improvise at all, or are their parts completely set?

I think that’s the thing about writing for big band, as compared to writing for a small setting. I think when writing for big band, I feel like you have to really dictate the dynamics and the energy of the piece because there are so many different people. I guess if all like 16 of us were trying to do something with our own ideas, it could be a bit chaotic, whereas in a quintet, there is more room to allow people’s like personal voices to come through. So yeah, that’s the main difference that I found between big band and quintet. I really try to research whatever I’m writing for.

So you say you compose on the piano. So is that where you completely start?

Sometimes I start on piano. I realized that I don’t play piano very well and try and do something with the bass, but there’s no escaping the superiorness of the piano when it comes to composing in terms of range and harmony. As much as I am a bass player, and I’ll always advocate for bass but when you’re composing, especially for big band, it’s um, it’s, yeah, the piano wins in that respect.

As you are a composer and a producer, do the composing and production kind come hand in hand in a way? Because when you’re composing music and producing music, you obviously hear things that you know other people don’t hear. So do they kind of work hand in hand?

Yeah! I think as you become more of a composer, you kind of then also lean towards production and then a little a little bit of mixing. I guess you know how you wrote the piece, and I guess you know how you want the piece to sound and I realized that quite a lot, especially when It comes to mixing and producing, that when you give that role to somebody else, they kind of change the music, sometimes not in the way you intend it to be. So I’ve been leaning more on the producing and the mixing side of things as well.

When you put an album together, how do you determine the track list? Or more importantly, how do you decide the book ends? Because that must be quite important to really think out the open and the close?

Yeah, I think the ordering of the tracks can change the entire meaning or just the essence of the album. I think with ‘Balance’, I wanted to start off with ‘Music not numbers’ because it has such a big introduction to it compared to the rest of the tracks. So make a, like, a really massive statement. And then to end the album with ‘You Know’, which is a track that features Zola Marcelle. At the end of it, there’s, like, a nice bit with just vocals and strings which I kind of wanted to just, maybe soften the ending, as opposed to the sort of big ending and big dramatic beginning of music not numbers?

How do you know what songs to put vocals to? With a mostly instrumental body of work – How do you hear vocals on songs? Do you think “I can hear a voice in this one”?

I think that’s happened maybe once, and I think that’s with the last album Boxed In. One of the tracks with Ria Moran (there are three tracks feat. Ria Moran on album Boxed In) which I wrote as an instrumental, and then I had vocals on it. I really like, when working with a vocalist, for it to be a collaborative effort. So I do my thing, and then they add, like vocals and lyrics. I don’t write lyrics, I think I’d be terrible at it. Mainly when I am working with a vocalist, it’s a collaborative effort from the get go so it’s always meant to be a vocal track.

Do any of your songs, even though you’re the one composing and producing it – do any of the songs sound completely different from composition to full production to the point that you’re like, Wow, I didn’t know it could actually sound like that.

Yeah think with all of them haha! So the way that we recorded it (Balance album) we recorded piano, bass and drums, and then we recorded a day of the saxophones, day of the trumpets and day of the trombones. And then we recorded strings, and then we put it all together. So it was a very much for the longest time when putting this album together, was wondering whether it was going to work, and luckily, it did, and I’m super grateful. But I think between the initial idea and how it ends up, there are so many great musicians that I’m in debt to for it, to make it sound that way.

What is your mindset per project? Do you have any particular artist direction you take when you’re creating a new album, or do you pretty much go with a flow? Whatever comes out comes out?

I think definitely since ‘Boxed In’ in and ‘Balance’, it has been a journey of large ensembles, I’ve noticed. I would love to write for orchestra, a symphony orchestra and equally, I would love to continue writing for big bands. So yeah, there is, there is this dynamic of what I would like to do, and what is available.

You have James Beckwith on a couple of tracks. What’s it like working with him?

Yeah, James, he’s such an incredible musician. I love all the musicians but yeah I love James Beckwith. He’s been in my band for quite some time now. We went to South by Southwest in Texas A few years ago. We played at the awards ceremony for the Arts Foundation, and we’ve got a quintet show coming up at Notting Hill club, he’s going to be doing it on the 19th of April. Yeah, I love that guy.

You have probably been asked this a lot, and it feels like a distant memory now, so forgive me for asking repetitive questions. What was it like releasing an album just before the pandemic as you did with ‘These Days’ did you worry about it reaching anyone, or did it in the end, because everybody was stuck home, did people have the ability to find you? As you know, people were listening to music more and discovering new music.

I think it’s just hard to release a record anyway, and there will never be a perfect time. It did present its own difficulties, but I think I really feel that all the records are part of the journey. And releasing a record around the pandemic, it’s also part of the journey. I think that the releasing of an album is difficult anyway.

Yeah, I could understand that. And did you spend most of your time just writing more music in that time as well?

Yeah, I think I really learned. I really focused on orchestration quite a bit. I think what happened during the pandemic for me was that I realized how much I was trying to do at the same time, and actually just having a minute to do it in a very exclusive way just made me realize how quite often I try and overshoot in terms of what I’m trying to do. So the pandemic was obviously incredibly difficult in some aspects, but from a productive sort of way, I got some things out.

Back to Cheltenham Jazz Festival – Will you have time to see anybody else perform?

I will see Nubya Garcia because I am doing that project haha. I am there the day after so yeah! I love Cheltenham, the jam session that they have there, that was such a surreal moment the first time I was there, I met Marcus Miller for the first time. And, yeah, I may have been about 19 or 20 at the time, I was completely starstruck. So yeah, I will definitely be heading there, yeah, just, just to meet up with other musicians.

I have never been to Ronnie Scott’s…. What is it about the venue that is so iconic for you?

It’s such an incredible thing that this country has the leading Jazz club in Europe. If you want to see Jazz and you’re at a loose end, something incredible is always going to be there. Just the history of the place. I think, just to borrow a football analogy a bit, other venues are playing away from home, Ronnie’s for me, is playing home!

Daniel Casimir Big Band will be playing Cheltenham Jazz Festival on May 3rd at The Parabola Arts Centre Cheltenham Ladies’ College – 8.30 pm. Tickets and information here

Follow Daniel Casimir on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and his website here.