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Tim Whitehead in St Ives

St Ives Jazz Club / Events
Date: Mar 30, 2008 - 05:53 PM
Tenor saxophonist Tim Whitehead plays St Ives Jazz Club on April 1st...

ST IVES JAZZ CLUB at the WESTERN HOTEL

Tues 1 April
8pm doors for 9pm
£9/£6 members

TIM WHITEHEAD
with RALPH FREEMAN TRIO
MARCUS VERGETTE (db) & PIP HARBON (dm)

‘Whitehead has a highly personal, always gorgeous sound on tenor and an infinite vocabulary - in a country of fine saxophonists he is one of the finest.’ Birmingham Post.

'There are many fine tenor players on the current British scene but Tim Whitehead is undoubtedly one of the best we have’. Crescendo Magazine

Tim Whitehead was born in Liverpool in 1950, the son of one of the original writers of Dennis the Menace in the children’s comic, The Beano. His first public performance was as solo clarinettist in his school orchestra’s rendition of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, conducted by his school friend, the now knighted, Sir Simon Rattle. From this promising musical beginning, Tim decided to follow a career in Law, but was pulled back to music, and more specifically jazz, soon after qualifying. He hasn’t looked back since.

During his career, Tim has played extensively throughout the UK and Europe, and more recently in the USA with American pianist Phil DeGreg. In the 70s he toured with Ian Carr’s Nucleus and Graham Collier Music and won the Young Jazz Musicians of the Year Award with his own band South of the Border in 1977.

In the 80’s he was a member of the groundbreaking big band Loose Tubes, and continued to develop his own music, recording for Spotlite Records and Editions EG - English People (1983) and Decision (1987) with his own bands, featuring at different times John Parricelli, Django Bates, Nic France and Pete Jacobsen.

In the 90’s he recorded Authentic and Silence Between Waves, on Ronnie Scott’s Jazz House Label with Dave Barry, Pete Jacobsen and Arnie Somogyi, and received The Andrew Milne Award for Jazz, as well as several other commissions during this period. In 1999 Tim released Personal Standards, an album of soul and pop tunes arranged for jazz quartet, which received widespread interest and critical praise including Jazz Album of the Year in the BBC Music Magazine, and led to an educational project at Trinity College of Music under the same title.

In 2000, Colin Riley and Tim won the Peter Whittingham Award to complete and record Tides with the Homemade Orchestra. This was the beginning of a long term collaboration. Since then the HomeMade Orchestra have toured extensively and received several awards and commissions as well as releasing their second album, Inside Covers in 2005.

In 2004 Tim founded the musicians’ co-operative WayOutWest, which he has continued to chair since, presenting regular performances at the Ram Jam Club in Kingston and at local theatres as well as workshops and discussion groups.

Early in 2005 Tim toured with the award-winning Italian pianist Giovanni Mirabassi. This led to the release of their album Lucky Boys (in the UK and Japan) in 2006 and since then they have continued to work together both in the UK and Europe. Also during this period, Tim premiered Landscape with Birds, a saxophone concerto by Colin Riley, with the Orchestra Viva.

In November 2007 he featured with BBC New Generations Artist Gwilym Simcock in The Free Thinking Festival at St George’s Hall in Liverpool, recorded live for BBC Radio 3, also collaborating with Gospel singer Jennifer Johns on his own piece ‘Let Her Rave’.

Tim is currently working in the studio on a new album with Colin Riley and The HomeMade Orchestra, due for release in autumn 2008, which features settings of the “Nonsense” poetry of Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen to original scores. The project will be performed live with Michael himself reading the poems and is due for tour in 2008/9.




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