Support from Hudge & Cian with Live art by Kyoko Shirai & Visuals by Tommy T
Mark de Clive-Lowe is a musical wizard on stage - juggling grand piano, synths, live sampling and beat making all on-the-fly, brought to life with a casual ease that’s mind-boggling. Pianist, composer, jazz musician, live remixer and electronic music producer, the Japanese-New Zealander was raised in New Zealand where he learned piano from a young age developing an avid passion for jazz through his father’s record collection. In high school in NZ and Japan, he fell in love with sample-heavy 90s hip hop and early UK drum’n’bass – laying the foundation for a lifetime of genre-bending sonic adventures.
During formative decade at the epicenter of London’s underground music scene, Mark helped evolve the broken beat genre alongside some of the UK’s most forward-thinking trailblazers, establishing himself as a new voice in progressive electronic music and leading global tastemaker DJ Gilles Peterson to designate him “the man behind a million great tunes”. While in London, Mark released his albums ‘Six Degrees’ (Universal) and ‘Tide’s Arising (ABB/Columbia) and established his unique jazz-meets-electronica sound touring the world, prompting Jazziz to write with 20/20 hindsight in 2019:
“way before jazz hybridity became a worldwide phenomenon, de Clive-Lowe was busy designing its blueprint.”
Relocating to Los Angeles in 2008, his club night CHURCH was soon taking his signature sound of technology and beat-infused jazz mash-up from coast to coast and around the globe, seeing him on stage with multiple generations of the world’s most respected jazz, soul and hip hop artists - “equal parts jazz club, dance party and live remix experiment” as he likes to describe it, bringing his love for all things jazz, beat and DJ culture into one seamless blend of community, culture and connection. His 2019 release Heritage - a two-part double-album - sees Mark deep dive into his Japanese roots and ancestry through the lens of jazz and electronica - an immersive and evocative soundtrack transporting the listener through MdCL’s own experience of Japan along with his love for its history and mythology. Downbeat offers:
“de Clive-Lowe’s notion of truth on Heritage ultimately reaches beyond the individual, beyond his lineage and into the cultural moment we’re currently living”.
With 2021’s Motherland, Mark’s ancestral deep-dive evolved into a 40-minute immersive film - blending footage he shot in Kaga, Japan set to a performance of ancestrally-inspired compositions presented as an intimately meditative, stripped-down solo set. Experimental short films Tiger and Dragon, in collaboration with NZ’s Good Company Arts feature Mark’s original soundtracks and have garnered recognition at numerous international film festivals.
Whether he’s remixing classic Blue Note Records in real-time, on stage joined by the likes of Kamasi Washington, Kimbra or Eric Harland, improvising introspective solo piano or creating live ambient soundtracks, Mark de Clive-Lowe is an artist in constant evolution. He has performed with Harvey Mason, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Dwight Trible and Jean Grae; remixed Shirley Horn, Hiatus Kaiyote, Mantombi Matotiyana and Jerry Goldsmith; and recorded as producer and collaborator with artists all over the planet. Having released twenty albums and contributed to over 300 releases, he is among the most prolific of his generation.
Mark has performed across the US and throughout the world. He has given feature performances at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The Smithsonian, The Lincoln Center and is Founding Artist in Residence for La Ceiba Festival (2020). He is also a 2021 U.S.-Japan Creative Artists Fellow, Montalvo Arts Lucas Artist Program Fellow and Creative NZ Arts Council of NZ Creative Fellowship recipient.
