“At its heart ‘Invisible Forces’ is about love. The love of music. The love of the piano. Empathy between people, and a love of life... an album that has the power to move everyone who listens to it.” Clash
“His music is euphoric, dreamy and perfectly formed.” Elizabeth Alker, BBC Radio 3
"A masterful set of contemporary piano pieces. The sound Heather makes is captivating." Electronic Sound
“Superb instrumental music.” CRACK (8 Stand Out Moments from Green Man Festival)
“One of the most exciting pianists to emerge in recent years.” Mahogany Sessions
“A special voice…” Headphone Commute
“Capable of supreme tenderness and yet, tonally, hugely powerful.” Mixmag
“Incredibly emotive pieces. A tender, touching album.” Loud and Quiet (Albums of the Month)
"James Heather’s debut album quietly announces him as a new contender. A possible future heavyweight.” The Arts Desk
“Masterful contemporary piano.” Dummy
“Shimmers on the cusp of emotive melody and ambience.” Mojo
"Searingly poignant… Heather plays with lightness of touch, intuition and resonant heart and soul… a work of empathy and unexpectedly positive spirit that reward repeated listens.” Financial Times (Album of the Week)
“This classical masterwork seems like it has simply come out of nowhere.” Bandcamp (Albums of the Week)
“A fragile, beautiful album.” The Line of Best Fit
“His emotional literacy and desire to use his music to connect with others on a profound level sets him apart from some of his peers.” A Closer Listen
"@0’s most transcendent moment, though, is James Heather’s stunning “And She Came Home”, an evocative chamber piece with weeping strings whose melody sounds strangely familiar, soundtrack music for a film that plays in one’s deepest dreams." Pop Matters (on Coldcut's @0 compilation)
“Proved that classical piano really can be enjoyed by everyone, with his music providing a multi-dimensional listening experience… creating a beautiful sense of the sublime” Outline (Live Review)
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In 2022 Heather released his second album, Invisible Forces. The album is about becoming aware of invisible forces around us to help deepen understanding of self and our connection to the world. It’s about looking that bit deeper into things, into areas that are not instantly visible but are all around us to achieve this. “Composing these songs gave me an anchor to feel more present in life after some troubling times and sent me on a journey to rediscover a kind of wonderment with the world. I hope the Invisible Forces universe will bring warmth to other people too.” A step forward compositionally from his 2017 debut album Stories From Far Away On Piano, the songs are grander, deeper and broader in emotional range and are developed through a series of improvisation techniques rarely seen in the often notated world of classical music. He describes his music as “pulse music” with each track performed in a single take, with no metronome or notation. He memorised each movement, then subtly adapted adding more complexities and compositional dexterity over time before committing to the final take. In 2023 Invisible Forces was nominated for a Libera Award in the USA for Best Classical Record.
The tracks (alongside 2021’s Modulations: EP2) were honed playing shows on the road, culminating in a special live performance recorded at Printworks for Mahogany Sessions in June 2022, receiving over 100,000 views in its first week and being selected by The Royal Albert Hall to play their Steinway series. In Oct '22. In 2021, Heather released a new version of 'And She Came Home' with strings for Coldcut's ambient @0 compilation in aid of CALM, Mind and Black Minds Matter, with the song being promoted as a double-single alongside Ryuichi Sakamoto. On the same compilation he contributed piano parts to a new version of the seminal ambient track ‘Autumn Leaves Return’ by Coldcut & The Irresistible Force.
Growing up in Southampton, Heather’s Grandad on one side of the family taught him core composition techniques and how to manipulate the tuning of piano strings, whilst his Granny on the other used to dabble with dreamy improvisations. His own compositions came soon after around the age of 11, also inspired by a love of Beethoven and Debussy, hearing his neighbours Acid House pirate radio station and later hearing a young Milo from Portico Quartet jamming in jazz bands two doors away. Heather spent years honing his piano playing, imagining composing for a collective, but a mixture of shyness and different trends of the day meant things evolved privately. Often in these early years he would be playing in the background when family and friends were over, hoping to pique their interest without stopping their conversation but secretly wanting to be centre stage. After moving to London in his twenties, he had a near death experience, which fed into his energy to step out as an artist. The result was to bring a fresh take to piano music which on streaming services have been played over 180 million streams in just a few years and his debut album charting at #14 in Classical Crossover in the Billboard (USA) charts.
Influence wise, the music takes as much from electronic music in sensibility, post-rock in its exploration of building dynamics as it does its classical and jazz grounding. Heather proves adept in the intricacies of composition from the tender to more propulsive, hypnotictrance inducing dynamics, always highly personal and with warmth and hope in the sadness. It belies the fact the music is coming from jone acoustic instrument. Heather often (but not only) composes and releases on solo piano, an instrument he has a long love story with, but with influences filtering in from beyond the instrument. “My current music acts as a lived reaction to music that is more machine than human, but not in opposition to it. To be minimalist in an age where you can do everything so easily, can also hold power, if not more. I am still obsessed with the compositional possibilities within a raw song.”
The embryonic unofficial release the Water Sonatas in 2015, initially helped hone his production skills and compositional technique and received warm reactions, with the experiences being fed into his debut album when Heather started to release music officially via Ahead Of Our Time in 2017, Ninja Tune founders Coldcut’s resurrected first label. First came Modulations: EP1, seven tracks which were written in various headspaces. Next came his debut album Stories From Far Away On Piano, a more unified conceptual piece of work, Artists such as Mogwai, Voces8, DJ Seinfeld, Mary Lattimore, KMRU, Sarah Davachi, Chihei Hatakeyama, Ishmael Ensemble and Echo Collective have contributed towards his “Reworks” album series aswell as Heather composing new additional string quartet versions himself.. Supporters include James Lavelle (UNKLE), Cillian Murphy, Forest Swords, Emika (who he played 2 sold out shows with at the Berlin Planetarium), The Bug, Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder label, Hannah Peel and The Cinematic Orchestra, who asked Heather to rework their song "A Caged Bird / Imitations Of Life" for their 'To Believe' remix album. Nils Frahm has put Heather's music in his Piano Day playlists every year since 2019
“The Stories From Far Away On Piano album was an appeal to emotion, a way of bringing the listener in, to evoke an empathetic response, they’re my interpretation of stories I discovered. The stories themselves are not the focus, but the piano assimilation is, as the album is about viewpoint, opinion and perspective.” Perspective is something Heather has in abundance; he nearly died in a traumatic road traffic accident, leaving him in a coma in intensive care and then off work for an extended time. One permanent injury was his finger, which became skewed in the crash. He was initially unsure if he’d ever be able to play to the same standard again. “When I eventually started to recover I began taking my musical sketches more seriously. I found solitude channeling my feelings into compositions, and when I saw the solo piano of Rachel Grimes play to a room of underground rock fans at Shelllac’s ATP Festival, at one of my lowest points, I was surprised that the piano might be able to appeal to a wider audience than I had thought previously."
Heather also presents the monthly radio show Moving Sounds on Soho Radio. The show is named after this longtime playlist and showcases music and people from the new to household names within ambient music and its offshoot genres and guests have included Hania Rani, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Sarah Davachi, Julianna Barwick, Bat For Lashes, Abul Mogard, 130701 Records, Sonic Pieces, Büşra Kayıkçı, Coldcut, Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, Mario Batkovic and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith. Musically, his collaborations live and on record include Dawn Richard, Coldcut, Sinemis, Penelope Trappes, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Nailah Hunter, Rachika Nayar and Roger Robinson (King Midas Sound).
Heather’s music has featured on many curated playlists streaming playlists, reached number 2 on the UK classical charts in iTunes, received plays on BBC Radio and internationally (including KEXP in the USA). and was invited in 2021 to curate a Classical Focus mix for BBC Sounds. Coverage has included interviews at Quietus and Loud & Quiet as well as glowing reviews at Financial Times (a lead), Clash, Arts Desk, Line Of Best Fit, Mojo and DJ. Heather has also completed DJ mixes for Solid Steel, a Mica Levi special for Vinyl Factory (Resident Advisor’s mix of the day), Headphone Commute and taken over Nabihah Iqbal’s NTS show. Heather has played on bills with Laura Marling, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Bill Laurance (Snarky Puppy), Lubomyr Melnyk (Erased Tapes) and toured Europe many times, including as a headline artist in March 2023. Heather composed scores for Iskra Strings (Radiohead & Ólafur Arnalds) of his songs for his sold-out headline show at St Pancras Old Church in London and has also broken new ground for solo piano by playing shows such as Wilderness, Neues Museum, Green Man (opening the Far Out tent which included Idles and making Crack Magazine's 8 Stand Out Moments in their review), Glastonbury (his first ever gig in 2017 apart from Sofar Sounds) and Seachange. He has become a unique and stand-out performer in the piano world.
Heather is one of the new school set of ‘post classical’ artists flourishing and standing out in the wake of the wider public’s overdue but now burgeoning relationship with this varied genre.
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