The Pete Roth Trio, featuring legendary drummer Bill Bruford, will bring its adventurous and highly interactive approach to jazz to The Capstone Theatre in Liverpool on Friday 23rd October 2026, for what is an absolute must for jazz enthusiasts.
Led by guitarist Pete Roth, with Mike Pratt on bass and Bill Bruford on drums, the trio occupies a musical space somewhere between jazz, rock, funk and contemporary classical music. Rather than treating those genres as fixed categories, the musicians use them as starting points for performances built around improvisation, close listening and the interplay between three distinctive musical voices.
The result is what the band describes as “near-jazz”: intimate, relatively unscripted music in which compositions can change shape in the moment and the relationship between the musicians — and between performers and audience — becomes an important part of the experience.
That approach makes the trio particularly suited to live performance. Its repertoire moves between Roth’s original compositions, pieces created collaboratively by the group and unexpected reinterpretations of established works. At The Capstone, audiences can expect music drawing on pieces such as Dancing with Grace, Trio in Five and Looking Forward to Looking Back, alongside the trio’s reimagining of the Largo from Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9.
At the centre of the group is guitarist and composer Pete Roth. Born in Germany and playing guitar from the age of 11, Roth initially drew inspiration from blues and rock before moving to England to study jazz. His influences subsequently expanded to include guitarists such as Joe Pass, John Scofield and Julian Lage. Alongside his work as a bandleader, he has built a varied career encompassing session work, theatre productions, live bands and recording projects.
For Roth, the trio provides a setting in which intricate melodies and electric textures can coexist with improvisation and rhythmic freedom. Rather than placing the guitar permanently at the front of the ensemble, the format leaves space for all three musicians to lead, respond and reshape the music as it develops.
Bassist Mike Pratt is equally central to that conversation. A double bassist, electric bassist, composer and producer, Pratt’s musical background encompasses funk, acid jazz and fusion, with influences including Weather Report, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Charles Mingus and Duke Ellington.
His career has included performances at Ronnie Scott’s, the Jazz Cafe, the Royal Albert Hall and Cape Town Jazz Festival, as well as composition, recording, teaching and musical direction. Within the trio, the bass becomes an equal melodic, harmonic and rhythmic voice rather than simply providing accompaniment.
Completing the line-up is one of the most celebrated drummers to emerge from British progressive music: Bill Bruford. Best known to many listeners through his work with Yes and King Crimson, Bruford’s career has consistently crossed the boundary between rock and jazz.
His extensive jazz credentials include work with musicians including Al Di Meola, Allan Holdsworth, David Torn, Django Bates, Tim Garland and Iain Ballamy. His own groups Bruford and Earthworks explored everything from complex harmony and electronic percussion to odd metres and acoustic jazz improvisation.
Bruford was inducted into Modern Drummer magazine’s Hall of Fame in 1990 and, as a member of Yes, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017. His appearance with the Pete Roth Trio places that remarkable musical history in a very different setting: a compact ensemble where responsiveness, restraint and the willingness to take risks matter as much as technical virtuosity.
That combination has already attracted enthusiastic responses. Reviewing the group, Edinburgh Music Review described a performance as “joyous, diverse, intrepid and thoroughly enjoyable”, while observing that the musicians understand jazz conventions but are willing to break them in order to put something fresh back into the music.
The Progressive Aspect, meanwhile, noted the trio’s ability to win over an audience drawn initially from progressive rock, suggesting that listeners arrived as prog aficionados and departed as jazz fans. It is an apt reflection of a band whose appeal lies partly in its refusal to settle comfortably into either camp.
For listeners familiar with Bruford through progressive rock, the concert offers an opportunity to encounter his distinctive rhythmic approach at close quarters and within a highly improvisational setting. For jazz audiences, meanwhile, the trio offers a guitar-led ensemble prepared to stretch the familiar format through rock energy, unusual rhythmic ideas, electric textures and repertoire that can reach all the way to Dvořák.
Above all, the Pete Roth Trio is conceived as a live band. Its music depends upon three musicians reacting to one another in real time, meaning that the precise direction of a piece — and sometimes its destination — may only become clear as the performance unfolds. The Pete Roth Trio featuring Bill Bruford performs at The Capstone Theatre in Liverpool on Friday 23rd October at 7.30pm. Tickets are £22.
The Pete Roth Trio Featuring Bill Bruford / The Capstone Theatre, Liverpool Hope University Creative Campus, 17 Shaw Street, Liverpool, L6 1HP / Friday 23rd October 2026, 7.30pm
