Harriet Stubbs's brand new album release this Friday! Living On Mars! Hear the eclectic and elastic classical pianist ahead of her new album Living on Mars (out 10/13)
In her quest to make classical music more than background music, Stubbs has worked with David Bowie’s pianist Mike Garson to produce and arrange her upcoming album Living on Mars. It features music from Nick Cave, Coldplay, and The Beatles alongside classical composers like Chopin. It is the perfect example of Harriet’s eclectic and elastic approach – think of John Coltrane covering a pop chestnut like “My Favorite Things”
The inclusion of the Nick Cave song is especially personal. The two are close friends, with Cave championing her to many in the pop and rock artistic community. Their friendship is a story in itself as they met through their mutual passion of cold water swimming. The two often go on swims together near their London homes (Stubbs has an ambition to swim the English Channel one day).
Stubbs says Living On Mars has its roots in the series of 200 consecutive 20-minute live concerts she performed from her ground-floor West Kensington, London flat during the height of the pandemic to appreciative audiences gathered outside her window. Awarded a British Empire Medal (BEM) by the Queen along with a spot on Her Majesty’s prestigious annual Birthday Honours List for “services to the community in West London,” Stubbs began planning for a genre-bending collection built around a stunning re-imagining of the album’s closing track, a majestic “Life on Mars?” she describes as “Bowie meets Rachmaninoff.”
There’s quite a bit more about Stubbs: she has her own podcast, she’s a William Blaker scholar, and she’s involved in building reef nurseries too. But the best way to get to know her is through her music.
- Nick Cave: I think the album is beautiful and strange and chaotic and brutal and immensely playable. Raw, anarchic, mesmerizing music. Harriet Stubbs and Mike Garson are a mad dream team
