Meet the Yorkshire musician attempting to write, record and release an album in a day

Plenty of people have set themselves ambitious challenges during lockdown and Jonny Mansfield can certainly count himself among them.

The 24-year-old jazz musician intends to compose, record, mix, master and then release an entire album on August 6 in a spare room at his parents’ house in Shepley near Huddersfield.

For good measure, each album track will have a different compositional process - and he will also be filming himself throughout the day so he can document the experience for a YouTube video.

Mansfield, who intends to call the album Portrait, says he came up with the concept after his band Bonsai had been doing an online tutorial for music students.

“We were doing a workshop to some music students and I was saying to them the success of being a musician is not about getting awards or great reviews, it is about creating and trying to connect with people,” he says. “By doing that you then develop your own process. Afterwards, I thought how can I put those words into action myself? Then this album in a day idea came up. The more I thought about it, the more it felt really appealing to try and make this clear and honest snapshot of this pretty unique situation we are all in.”

He says he is hopeful the finished product will reflect the unusual state of the world at the moment.

“I think there will be a lot of what is going on at the moment being in lockdown and everybody being isolated in their own little bubbles and there will be a chance to reference things like the Black Lives Matter movement and our own personal wellbeing. A lot of good things have come out of a really bad situation and that is something I have been thinking a lot about.”

Mansfield says while he plans to do everything from scratch on the day, he is carefully working out a timetable to make the best use of the limited hours he will have on the day.

“My plan is to go to bed quite early the day before after having the room all set up in terms of having the instruments and microphones ready,” he says.

“Then I’ll get up around 5am, I plan to do about five to six hours of composing through to about 10am. Then there will be around eight hours of recording to take me through until around 7pm. It will then be about four hours of mixing and mastering and editing it all. That will leave an hour to do the uploads so it can be released.

“I have got a room where I have put all my instruments and have all the microphones plugged in. I’m really fortunate to have that space. It is a spare room but I have got it to sound pretty good.

“I’m obviously going to be quite preoccupied with the music but I want to film bits to talk through what I am doing and release it on YouTube.”

Mansfield grew up surrounded by music - his parents are both musicians who played a mixture of classical and jazz around the house and he followed in his older brothers’ footsteps by attending the prestigious Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester from the age of 14.

This led him to being part of the National Youth Orchestra, Verbier Festival Youth Orchestra and National Youth Jazz Collective and he went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London when he was 18. His burgeoning career has seen him perform at the Royal Albert Hall and tour throughout Europe, while in 2018, he won the Kenny Wheeler Jazz prize.

His debut album with his 11-piece ensemble Elftet was released last year while his band Bonsai have released two albums as well. He was also commissioned by Marsden Jazz Festival to write an hour-long suite of music for poems by Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, which was broadcast on the BBC.

Mansfield has also led workshops at Chetham’s School of Music and Aberdeen and Leicester Universities, while he recently started teaching vibraphone at Leeds College of Music.

Despite such an impressive list of achievements at a young age, like almost everyone in the music industry Covid-19 has put much of his work on hold.

His last shows were in early March as the pandemic took hold across the UK. He says at that stage it was quickly becoming apparent how challenging the situation was going to be for the creative industries as audiences dwindled. After living in London for the past six years, he has moved out of his flat in the capital and back to his parents’ home in Yorkshire.

“I have had two tours under my own projects cancelled and I think five tours working with other people called off. I have moved out of my flat I was renting in London and moved back to my parents’ house in Huddersfield. I have got two older brothers who aren’t here which has enabled me to use the spare room to put my equipment in. In terms of the effect on my career and financial stability, it is really demanding at the moment. The first time I have considered a career change has been in lockdown.”

He has a tour due in September and with the resumption of Arts Council funding later this month, Mansfield hopes it will be able to go ahead - but considerable changes will be requited if it does go ahead.

“It’s still very uncertain what social distancing regulations there will be in September, which would make it impossible to tour a 11 piece band - sharing lifts, squeezing onto a tight stage, sharing a hotel room, etc - and that’s before you add in the audience. So the tour in September will have to be a trio if it’s possible to fit large enough audiences into the venues to make it viable.”

He says while the Government’s £1.57bn bailout for the arts has been greatly beneficial, clear guidance is needed as soon as possible on how to safely start resuming indoor shows once again.

He intends to release the Portrait album at midnight on August 6 via an online platform called Bandcamp, which works on the basis of giving 80 to 85 per cent of revenue directly to artists - a far higher percentage than the major streaming services.

Mansfield says that despite the major financial challenges facing musicians at the moment - demand for what they create has never been higher. “The thing that hasn’t been taken away is the creativity and I think probably more than ever before, people are wanting to be transported by music. The problem is getting a platform, where people will buy the music and pay for it in a sustainable way.”

He says despite the current challenges, being a professional musician is a great privilege. “Music allows me to connect with people in a way I can’t with words. That is the real power of music that has become clear to me during lockdown. Sometimes it takes music to connect you with your own feelings and emotions. I’ve been very privileged to be able to study music in the way I have. I’m really lucky to have had that time and space.” 

For more information, visit Jonny’s Bandcamp page.


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