JAZZ PIANO

Jazz piano playing was a regular part of my freelance work for many years. It is something I remain very passionate about - my own happy place, and the place where i can really express my full self musically. It sadly had to take more of a back seat once I moved to the US, and began to work more seriously as a choral conductor.

Lockdown Jazz 2020

Resident in Brooklyn, New York, for lockdown, it was a joy to play and write regularly again, this time weekly with local bassplayer Byron Isaacs, of the Lumineers. We also played several times on the street (less infection risk) for our Gowanus friends and neighbors, to honor health service workers in New York City. Videos below, all recorded in August and September 2020.

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London jazz piano work

In the 1990s and early 2000s, I was regularly involved as a sideman pianist on the London jazz scene with the likes of Brian Abrahams, Bobby Wellins, Chris Wells and the Frank Williams African Jazz Quintet. I also played at Ronnie Scott’s with the award-winning Guildhall Big Band, which played my own arrangements. I also worked with a number of the UK’s top jazz singers, including Christine Tobin and Imogen Ryall. Before I moved to New York in 2007, he often led the monthly Sunday night Jazz Vespers at the church of St Ann’s and St Agnes in the City of London, where I played piano, and directed the pro jazz trio and a volunteer choir of jazz singers, who were there find community within London’s jazz scene.

Jazz version of Faure Requiem

There were also many set-piece performances with London’s Eclectic Voices, which combines jazz with classical music performance. One highlight in June 2002 was the British premiere at the Purcell Room (South Bank Center) of my own specially devised jazz version of Faure’s Requiem arranged for choir, rhythm section and two horns. The Purcell Room performance featured Kenny Wheeler (trumpet), Kennet Jonson (saxes) and Dill Katz (bass). The Faure has proven popular and was performed again early in 2006 by London chamber choir, Chantage, who won the UK’s ‘BBC Radio 3 Choir of the Year’ competition that year.