Actualités

TWO MINDS / New album to be released on 5 June 2026 on BMC Records.
Re-save the album HERE.

★ Rushes, the new single from Two Minds, is out on Wednesday, May 27 ★
Discover it HERE !

LISTEN

Podcast France Musique : concert à La Dynamo de Banlieues Bleues enregistré par Radio France à écouter ICI

Line-up

Robin Fincker : tenor saxophone, clarinet
Lauren Kinsella : voice
Kit Downes : piano, Hammond organ

Les interprètes de ces chants traditionnels leur donnaient une nouvelle vie, entre adaptation et quête d’une essence originelle. Robin Fincker, explique interpréter les ombres de ces chansons. Ces sont ces ombres à laquelle Lauren Kinsella prête sa voix, en retournant les airs et les paroles comme pour en examiner les coutures, glissant parfois vers des musiques et textes originaux voire des onomatopées, aux confins de la musique contemporaine ; Robin Fincker, entre saxophone ténor et clarinette, Kit Downes passant constamment de l’orgue Hammond au piano et vice-versa, éclairant textes et mélodies de flammèches abstraites qu’ils allument à leur traine. On aurait aimé inviter Luciano Berio, compositeur des fameux Folk Songs, à découvrir ces “ombres”.

Franck Bergerot, Jazz Magazine

Lauren Kinsella sings folksongs from several ages, and has a powerful yet subtle way of shaping them, providing a framework around which the others can explore freely and go off on voyages of discovery. Kit Downes will always find the astonishing tone colours which lie dormant in an organ, either in a church or in this case a Hammond, and Robin Fincker a is subtle, inventive, thoughtful, classy player. There is already an album due out next spring on the Hungarian BMC label. I managed to blag a copy: it is a delight."

Sebastian Scotney, London Jazz News

The fruitful collaboration between French saxophonist and clarinetist Robin Fincker and British pianist Kit Downes goes back several decades. By creating Shadowlands with Irish singer — London-based — Lauren Kinsella, they came together with the intention of setting to music a blend of early music, forgotten poetry, folk traditions, and original compositions.

Following their first album, Ombres, released on BMC Records in March 2024, which introduced audiences to the trio’s ethereal and dreamlike sound — notably through their acclaimed interpretation of Death and the Lady — they now present their new project, Two Minds, scheduled for release on the 5th June 2026.

With Two Minds, Shadowlands continues its exploration of the connections between early and contemporary music, shedding light on lesser-known aspects of ancient songs while offering its own vision of a contemporary folk music infused with improvisation. For this new repertoire, the trio has refined its musical language and developed a strikingly clear yet free-flowing way of moving from one piece to another. Within this universe, traditional Sean-nós songs, poems by Emily Dickinson and W. B. Yeats, as well as a sacred work by Maurice Ravel, coexist alongside original compositions.

Beneath flickering light, Lauren Kinsella’s voice hovers like a planet around which saxophone and keyboards revolve and gravitate, creating music of timeless motion.