Mark de Clive-Lowe

Few have fused jazz and electronic music as thoroughly or as thrillingly as keyboardist, bandleader, and producer Mark de Clive-Lowe. Born in Auckland in 1974 to a Japanese mother and a New Zealander father, de Clive-Lowe began playing piano at age four and immersed himself in hip-hop and electronic music in his teens; a pair of locally released albums served as the springboard for a 1998 move to London, where he became one of the key figures of the broken-beat scene. His 2000 album Six Degrees is a cornerstone of the style, bringing together jazz, drum ‘n’ bass, hip-hop scratching, Latin and Brazilian rhythms and a hefty dose of funk. Since then, the pianist has continued pushing beyond established boundaries. On 2014’s Church and 2019’s CHURCH Sessions, he channelled the post-genre spirit of his long-running CHURCH club nights in Los Angeles, where he moved in 2008; on 2019’s Heritage and Heritage II, he used jazz fusion to explore his Japanese roots. And while 2022’s Freedom - Celebrating the Music of Pharoah Sanders found him delving deep into spiritual jazz, de Clive-Lowe hasn’t abandoned his love of the dance floor: His Midnight Snacks series, launched in 2021, maintains the club focus of broken beat with powerful, bass-heavy grooves.