About

About the Group

The Chris Mason-Battley Group creates contemporary jazz reflecting the open spaces and untamed beauty of Aotearoa, New Zealand. It's musical influences include artists such as Pat Metheny, John Schofield, Keith Jarrett and Jan Garbarek.

Their debut album, Karakia was a finalist in the Jazz Album category of the 2000 New Zealand Music Awards. The album has also been very well received internationally with over a million downloads of their songs to date. For 2000 it was the most successful New Zealand group and one of the top 25 artists on MP3.com.

In 2002, the Chris Mason-Battley Group released their second album, a double CD entitled Unspoken. This album built on the spacious sound of their first album, while also exploring new cool acid jazz directions.

In 2004, one of their songs was included on an American Jazz compilation album along with tracks by artists such as Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock and Sarah Vaughan.

The group's music has been utilized in short films, multimedia projects and compilation albums.

In January 2005 the band embarked on an ambitious project:
Two Tides is collaboration with Richard Nunns for Rattle Records in which a more improvisational approach to composition was employed. Two Tides was launched at the Wellington Fringe Festival in February 2006.

The Band

For more information download a brochure (PDF 500K)