Harry Christelis

“Preserving Fictions”

(Clonmell Jazz Social CJS011CD)

Harry Christelis – guitar, effects, Christos Stylianides – trumpet, effects, Andrea Di Biase – double bass, synth, Dave Storey – drums

Harry Christelis (born 1988) is a London born guitarist and composer. He has previously appeared on the Jazzmann web pages as the leader of Moostak Trio, a group that also features bassist Andrea Di Biase and drummer Dave Storey. The trio’s eponymous début album was released in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic, which obviously curtailed their live appearances. They did however perform a livestream concert to an online audience from an empty Green Note in Camden as part of that year’s ‘virtual’ EFG London Jazz Festival. Both the Moostak Trio album and the Green Note livestream are reviewed elsewhere on The Jazzmann.

Album Review here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/moostak-trio-moostak-trio

Livestream Review here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/moostak-trio-livestream-from-the-green-note-camden-22-11-2020-part-of-efg-london-jazz-festival

In 2022 Christelis and fellow guitarist Pedro Velasco released the duo album “Scribbling”, which discretely and atmospherically blended the sounds of electric and acoustic guitars with electronics.
Review here;

Christelis has also worked in a duo format with drummer Yusuf Ahmed with whom he released the digital only recording “Live at Mu”, recorded in 2023 and released in 2025.

2023 saw the release of the excellent “Nurture The Child / Challenge The Adult”, an album that featured the line up listed above with Christelis, Di Biase and Storey joined by trumpeter Christos Stylianides in a kind of extension of the Moostak Trio. Once again electronics played a substantial role in the group’s music making. My review of the album, from which much of the following biographical material has been sourced, can be found here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/harry-christelis-nurture-the-child-challenge-the-adult

Christelis studied jazz at Middlesex University where his tutors included guitarist Chris Montague, multi-instrumentalist Stuart Hall, pianist Nikki Iles and trumpeter Chris Batchelor. He has since worked with an impressive array of musicians across a range of musical genres, among them singer-songwriters Georgia Duncan and Jamie Doe, who performs under the name The Magic Lantern. He has also worked with the bands Fur and Teotima.

Now an educator himself Christelis also heads Clonmell Jazz Social (CJS), an organisation that stages jazz and improvised music events across London, including the Summer Jazz Weekender free festival in Greenwich, and much of the jazz programme at the Green Note. CJS also runs its own record label.

Christelis has acknowledged the influence of fellow guitarists Jakob Bro and Bill Frisell upon his music, plus that of drummers Elvin Jones, Paul Motian and RJ Miller. Perhaps less obvious inspirations are the rock groups The Beatles and Talk Talk. Among Christelis’ other projects is Rubber Walrus, a quartet dedicated to putting a jazz slant on Beatles songs.

With this new release the music of trumpeters Miles Davis and Jon Hassell, composer / percussionist Midori Takada, singer songwriters John Martyn and Grouper and the ECM record label have been added to the list of inspirations.

In November 2024 I enjoyed a performance by a quartet led by Christelis at the Green Note, an event that formed part of that year’s 2024 EFG London Jazz Festival. At that time the guitarist had been working as a trio with saxophonist George Crowley and drummer / percussionist Will Glaser but for this performance the line up was augmented by the trumpet and electronics of Stylianides. The material played included a number of then new compositions that have subsequently emerged on the digital EP “Half Truths” (2025) and on the new “Preserving Fictions”. My review of the Green Note performance can be found here;

“Preserving Fictions” finds Christelis building upon the success of “Nurture The Child / Challenge The Adult”.

He says of the recording process for the new record;
“After our last quartet record and subsequent touring it felt that the group’s musical interplay and communication had reached a whole new level and I wanted to capture that energy with a new recording”.

In the summer of 2023 Christelis moved out of London and into the English countryside on a kind of artistic retreat. “In that short time away I found a focus that seems hard to come by in a city like London, and for the first time in a long while compositional juices began to flow”.

On the evidence of this often beautiful recording Christelis’ decision to ‘get it together in the country’ has certainly reaped its rewards.

This relaxed approach extended to the recording process as Christelis explains;
“As with our previous projects very little rehearsing was done before the recording session. I wanted to keep everyone in the dark about where each performance might go, so that we would all be forced to commit fully to the moment, shaping and developing the music in real time through instinct and interaction”.

He continues;
“The album has been a particularly meaningful one for me, helping to better understand the nature of creativity and how little control I truly have over it. It has taught me that in the creative process, as in life, there is never true certainty, never a ‘right way’. These are simply fictions we hold on to. This realisation inspired the title for ‘Preserving Fictions’ – a reminder to stay present with whatever comes, grateful for each lesson, knowing that something new may be just around the corner waiting to turn that on its head”.

As can be seen from the various musical influences listed above Christelis’ own music draws on a variety of styles and traditions, including jazz, rock, folk, ambient and electronic music, with plenty of room left for improvisation.

“Nurture The Child / Challenge The Adult” represented a particularly successful synthesis of these elements and the process continues with “Preserving Fictions”, which represents another impressive statement from Christelis and his quartet.

I remember album opener “Blues Of The Birds” being played at the Green Note albeit in a very different form. The album was recorded about a month after that live show at the Lightship 95 studio with Ben Lamdin engineering. As its title suggests “Blues Of The Birds” was inspired by birdsong and was composed during the time of Christelis’ rural retreat. Birdsong inspired sounds and motifs can be detected in the playing of Stylianides, Christelis and Di Biase’s bowed bass. Breathy trumpet and the leader’s guitar atmospherics give the piece an ambient feel but the gradual emergence of Storey’s hypnotic but ever evolving drum groove provide the opportunity for Stylianides and Christelis to take flight, soaring gracefully on the musical equivalent of thermals.

“A Sense of Parrot” draws inspiration from “Laughing Stock”, Talk Talk’s fifth and final album, and also their most experimental. Storey’s brushed drums and other percussive colourations underpin the gauzy, ambient atmospherics generated by Christelis and Stylianides via their range of effects, plus the deeply resonant but inherently melodic double bass of Di Biase.

Named for the village in Norfolk in which it was composed “Wood Dalling” is another tune that featured at the Green Note performance. Drifting ambience is again the order of the day with Storey’s fluid rhythms again underpinning the sounds of breathy, electronically enhanced trumpet and the leader’s more sharply defined, but still inherently atmospheric, guitar. Di Biase eventually emerges to deliver a bass ‘solo’ that has received favourable comparisons with the playing of such late bass greats as Charlie Haden and Danny Thompson.
In its closing stages the tune attains an anthemic, widescreen quality before seguing into “A Short Fiction”, an ambient piece with an electronic drone underscoring Christelis’  delicate, fluttering, high register guitar patterns.

Perhaps not so surprisingly “Sotsirhc” (the title is ‘Christos’ spelt backwards) represents something of a feature for Stylianides, who, with the aid of electronics, conjures an astonishing array of sounds from his trumpet. It’s another piece that acknowledges the influence of Talk Talk.

“For JB” is the piece that is perhaps closest to an orthodox jazz feel, a melodic ballad that merges melancholy with genuine beauty. Stylianides’ trumpet playing is laced with poignancy and emotion and the piece possesses a genuine song like quality. I’m not sure who JB is in this instance, but whoever they are they have a beautiful tune dedicated to them.

As its title might suggest “Djembe” is centred around the sound of Storey’s drums, with Di Biase’s bass also playing a prominent role The work of the intelligent and ever flexible rhythm team is augmented by the subtle colourations provided by guitar, trumpet and the omnipresent electronics, helping to give the music a noirish feel.

“And So We March On” is a solo feature for Christelis, a beautiful piece for electric guitar and its attendant effects. Song-like in construction the piece achieves a kind of meditative serenity. One is almost inevitably reminded of the music of Bill Frisell, a readily acknowledged influence, but this is a beautiful tune in its own right.

At first “We Whittled A Spoon” continues the air of quiet contemplation with Christelis introducing the piece with a passage of unaccompanied guitar. Trumpet, bass and drums are subsequently added, hazy and ethereal at first, with the sounds of breathy trumpet and cymbal shimmers. However there’s subsequently a change of dynamics as Stylianides’ trumpeting becomes more strident and Storey’s drumming more powerful as the quartet move into full wig out mode with sturdy bass lines and increasingly dynamic drumming fuelling the clarion call of the trumpet and the ringing tones of the leader’s guitar on one of the album’s stand out tracks.

“A Second Song For You” is a delightful guitar and double bass duet that recalls the music of the much loved Pat Metheny / Charlie Haden album “Beyond The Missouri Sky”. Again the piece has a song like construction and it’s an undeniably beautiful and intimate performance from Christelis and Di Biase, two musicians who have been playing together for a long time and who have developed a close and instinctive rapport. It may be that the skies that inspired them here were those of East Anglia rather than the American Mid West.

Grainy, ominous arco bass, accompanied by unsettling electronica, introduces “How Old Are You?”, a piece that possesses a chilly, almost austere beauty, the swirling textures achieved via the combination of guitar, trumpet and electronics evoking images of fog bound estuaries and mud flats. Gradually the mood lightens, the sound becomes brighter and more open and the music acquires something of an anthemic quality, like the aural equivalent of a sunrise.

The album concludes with a reprise of “A Second Song For You”, this time featuring all four musicians. It’s an equally beautiful interpretation with the soft, fragile sound of Stylianides’ trumpet taking the lead at first, followed by Christelis on guitar. Suitably sympathetic support is provided by solid double bass and brushed drums.

“Preserving Fictions” represents another impressive statement from Christelis and with over an hour of music the album represents excellent value for money. It builds upon the success of this quartet’s 2023 release and sees the group developing and refining their approach. The musicians impress with both their instrumental ability and their mastery of musical technology. The skilful deployment of effects and electronics is essential to the sound of this ensemble.

Christelis also impresses as a composer. Many of these pieces are undeniably beautiful and place a strong emphasis on melody. However colour, texture and dynamics are of equal importance and this band exhibits and impressive command of all of these. The addition of the excellent Stylianides has certainly enhanced the group sound, which is fuller and more varied than that of the already impressive Moostak Trio. But ultimately the triumph is Christelis’,  the composer and principal architect of this intriguing, intelligent, immersive and often beautiful music.

In support of the album, Harry Christelis will be touring Preserving Fictions in 2026, with performances on the following dates:

Thurs 19th Mar  – Soundcellar, Poole
Fri 20th Mar  – Hot Numbers, Cambridge
Thurs 26th Mar  – The Nutshell, Winchester
Sat 9th May  – 1000 Trades, Birmingham
Thurs 14th May – The Old Church, London (London Album Launch Concert) 
Sat 30th May  – The Royal Albert, London 
Mon 12th Oct – Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
Tues 13th Oct  – Glad Cafe, Glasgow 
Thurs 15th Oct  – The Blue Lamp, Aberdeen
Weds 4th Nov  – The Lescar, Sheffield

 

 

 

 

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