A fusion of jazz, contemporary art music, and ambient electronics

Neil Cowley Trio is far from a typical jazz trio. The dazzling British composer and pianist, together with his bandmates, creates deeply captivating and powerful music that is at once poetic and fragile, grand and majestic, yet also wild and untamed. Their work nods to Claude Debussy and Steve Reich as much as to Spiritualized and Arcade Fire, breaking down conventional notions of genre altogether. Known for their unique live performances, full of playfulness and British humor, the trio has toured the world and appeared at some of the most prestigious jazz festivals (most recently in 2025 at Palác Akropolis in Prague as part of the Respect Plus concert series). Their debut album Displaced won the BBC Jazz Award for Best Album in 2007. Five years later, The Face of Mount Molehill earned them the Jazz FM Award for Best UK Jazz Act. The conceptual album Spacebound Apes (2016) received glowing reviews from major media outlets. In 2024, Neil Cowley Trio released Entity, marking the reunion of the original lineup that will also perform in Prague.

A classically trained pianist and composer with a flair for tasteful pop and R&B (he has collaborated with singers such as Adele, Birdy, and Emeli Sandé), Cowley dissolved the original trio in 2017 — much to the regret of his numerous fans, who had come to see him as a cult figure. After several years pursuing a solo career and working with “virtual entities” — meaning electronics — Cowley began to long for the human interaction of playing in a trio again. And he missed specific people, too: drummer Evan Jenkins, who played on the trio’s debut Displaced (2006), and Rex Horan, who replaced the original double bassist Richard Sadler around the time of The Face Of Mount Molehill (2011).

Neil Cowley’s talent was evident from the age of ten, when he performed Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto and later studied at London’s Royal Academy. But as a teenager, he turned away from classical music, immersing himself in the worlds of R’n’B, soul, and funk, and began working with some of the most successful musicians of the time — including The Brand New Heavies and Zero 7. He became a sought-after pianist for soul and pop projects requiring jazz technique and rhythmic agility. It is Cowley you hear playing piano on Adele’s first two albums — the ones that earned her a total of eight Grammy Awards and made him arguably the most listened-to pianist on the planet.

In 2005, Cowley returned to his first love — the piano — and formed the Neil Cowley Trio. Their dynamic, charged sound, blending jazz with rock’s poetic energy, catapulted them to the forefront of the new British post-jazz wave. Their music is defined by catchy melodies, powerful riffs, and unpredictably playful passages interwoven with piercingly delicate ones — turning the very concept of the jazz piano trio on its head.