Ed was fortunate to be brought up in a musical family and started learning the piano aged 4. As a young boy he was a choral scholar in the Winchester College chapel choir (UK) where he absorbed so much of the ethereal atmospheric content his music possesses today. At school he continued piano lessons and learnt the clarinet, church organ and the drums, playing and listening to an eclectic mix of musical styles. Ed was exposed to some very powerful music from composers such as Mahler, Wagner, Britten and Beethoven from an early age through his parents Operatic careers, the Grammy award winning English Tenor Kim Begley and the Soprano Elizabeth Collier who would regularly appear in some of the worlds great opera houses and concert halls. It was an inspiring start.
Ed went on to study an undergraduate Jazz and Improvisation performance degree through a scholarship to Trinity Laban Conservatoire in London. Here he began to discover his own voice and started to explore contemporary music making in many new forms, eventually deciding to focus on his own songwriting. This has since flourished into writing for film, television and theatre and his compositions and music production span many genres and styles including, contemporary classical, secular vocal music, minimalism, Jazz, Electronic music of all forms, Rock, Pop and Blues.
Ed is influenced by songwriting artists such as Jeff Buckley, Leonard Cohen, John Lennon, Harry Nilsson and Thom Yorke and producers such as Brian Eno, Nigel Goodrich and Rick Rubin.
Ed dedicates his own artistic output to the exploration, documentation and communication of the profundities he experiences in life. Pondering the human condition is central to his work as a vocalist/lyricist, something he has consciously nurtured artistically for the past 15 years and subconsciously even further back within his musical upbringing and training.
Ed’s compositions and music production stem from the piano and various synthesisers, tools that aid him in ‘Mapping out an inner journey’. He hopes that his work will offer glimpses of and eventually grasp at some of the hidden depths of existence and in the process deliver mesmerising and visceral performances in an effort to offer people some respite from the tangible world we are all occupying.
Releases
Ed has self released 2 eps of his own with his first band ‘Archivist’ which prompted many collaborations in the electronic music world with producers/labels worldwide including Izniik, Soma Soul, Mark Hoffen, Anton Dhouran, Trikk, Toto Chiavetta to name a few. Ed is credited as a featured vocalist on tracks for labels such as Innervisions, Capitol, Atlant, Endless and Chapter 24. He has scored music for Sky Arts series ‘Urban Myths’ starring Aiden Gillen and also a variety of independent arthouse commissions and continual collaborations with visual artists and film makers including Benedict Morgan, Giulio Squillacciotti and William Foyle.
Ed lives in the marshlands of North East Essex in England. Currently he is working towards finishing his debut solo album with his band, recording at his studio in Essex and also in various churches and in the open air marshlands surrounding his home. He continues to collaborate and actively seeks to develop artistically through shared creativity.
Ed Begley 