Maryrose Crook and THE RENDERERS
Congratulations to Maryrose Crook of the Renderers for winning second runner up in the New Zealand Wallace Art Awards for 2020…! As any one who has purchased a previous Renderers or Maryrose Crook release that includes one of Maryrose’s artworks on the cover would know, Maryrose is an enormously talented artist. Maryrose’s painting that won this distinguished award is a reaction to the various disasters that are increasingly occurring, while at the same time recognizing a stronger than ever movement to heal our planet. These are very much the same themes that underline much of Maryrose’s music.
Aside from painting and winning international art awards, Maryrose has spent much of the past year composing material for the Renderers next release, an album of her solo material, titled Rococo. Since acquiring a piano at the beginning of the lockdown she has been composing and improvising on the keys. This was how she first began playing music as a kid with a particularly tortuous teacher, who all but put her off this once so ubiquitous musical instrument until quite recently. So we can expect some piano on the forthcoming release!
Maryrose, along with her husband and long time Renderers partner have been working on Rococo with their LA band, drummer Brian Hobart and bass player Eric McCann, who plays both an upright and electric bass, and they’re also planning a trip to Omaha to record with Kevin Donohue, drummer for “In the Sodium Light” and multi-instrumentalist Megan Siebe, who composed and played parts on most songs on the album, on viola, cello, vibes and various keyboards.
The Renderers are also planning a video for “Eye of the Mother”, one of the tracks for the new album, which has an almost zen quality, both of resignedness for the human condition and hope for its transcendence.
UK booking agency Upset the Rhythm are seeking to reschedule the UK and European tour dates for Maryrose and the Renderers that were supposed to take place in 2020, and will now take place in 2022 after Rococo is released, with plans for some West Coast concerts later in 2021, before taking their tour to Australia and New Zealand once this is possible again.