"Born in High Wycombe in 1936, Mike Westbrook grew up in Torquay and was educated at Kelly College, Tavistock. He formed his first band while studying painting in Plymouth in 1958, moving to London in the early 1960s. He has led and composed for a succession of groups, notably his 1960s Sextet and Concert Band, his Brass Band, formed in the mid 70s, the jazz rock group Solid Gold Cadillac and the Mike Westbrook Orchestra. He has toured extensively throughout Europe, and as far afield as Australia and the Far East, Canada and New York. He has directed performances of his work with big bands in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, France, Italy, Slovenia, Switzerland and Australia. He has broadcast on radio and TV in many countries, and made over 50 albums.Mike WestbrookMike Westbrook first made his mark as a composer with his 1960s recordings for Deram,- Celebration, Release and Marching Song, followed by Metropolis for RCA.

Subsequent compositions for Jazz Orchestra include Citadel/Room 315 featuring John Surman, The Cortege, On Duke's Birthday dedicated to the memory of Duke Ellington, Big Band Rossini which was featured in the 1992 BBC Proms and Chanson Irresponsable, (Enja Records) commissioned by BBC Radio 3, which brings together jazz and classical musicians.Works for classical ensembles include a saxophone concerto Bean Rows and Blues Shots which was commissioned by the Bournemouth Sinfonietta for John Harle, a score for the silent movie Moulin Rouge commissioned by the Matrix Ensemble, and Classical Blues in 2002 for the BBC Concert Orchestra. Mike's television music credits include the award-winning BBC drama Caught on a Train by Stephen Poliakoff and directed by Peter Duffell starring Peggy Ashcroft and Michael Kitchen.

His involvement in experimental theatre began in the late 60s with the multi-media work Earthrise, and collaborations with The Welfare State Theatre Company and The Cosmic Circus. His work for the stage includes Adrian Mitchell's Tyger a celebration of William Blake, staged by the National Theatre in 1971, and Mitchell's White Suit Blues about Mark Twain. His opera Quichotte commissioned by L'Ensemble Justiniana, toured in France in the 1980s. Coming Through Slaughter, based on the novel by Michael Ondaatje about the New Orleans cornettist Buddy Bolden, was premiered in London in a concert version in 1994.In collaboration with his wife, singer/librettist Kate Westbrook, he has generated a whole series of jazz/cabarets and music-theatre pieces, notably The Ass, based on the poem by D.H Lawrence, Pierides commissioned by Extemporary Dance Theatre and Good Friday 1663, a TV opera commissioned by Channel Four with libretto by Helen Simpson. Their 2003 composition Art Wolf commissioned by the Aargauer Kunsthaus, Switzerland, is dedicated to the 18th century Alpine painter Caspar Wolf.

Mike wrote the music for Kate Westbrook's album The Nijinska Chamber (voiceprint) pairing Kate's voice with accordionist Karen Street. Other compositions include two works for voice and acoustic brass, performed by The Village Band,- Waxeywork Show and English Soup or the Battle of the Classic Trifle which was premiered in 2008.

Their 2009 album Fine 'n Yellow was released on the Gonzo label. The Serpent Hit written for voice, percussion and saxophone quartet, was premiered in London in 2011 at Wilton's Music Hall.

The Westbrooks have also created large-scale concert works incorporating settings of European poetry, as in The Cortege a work for voices and jazz orchestra, and London Bridge Is Broken Down for voice, jazz group and chamber orchestra. Jago, their first full-scale opera, was commissioned by Wedmore Opera in 2000. Their jazz oratorio Turner in Uri, based on the painter Turner's travels in the Swiss Alps, was premiered in Altdorf and Zurich in 2003. Their opera Cape Gloss - Mathilda's Story for classical soprano and piano, had its first performance at the University of Plymouth in 2007.

Mike Westbrook's albums for ENJA Records include The Cortege, Bar Utopia a big-band cabaret with lyrics by Helen Simpson, The Orchestra of Smith's Academy, compositions recorded 'live' by the Mike Westbrook Orchestra and the Steve Martland Band, a tribute to the Beatles Off Abbey Road, and Glad Day settings of the poetry of William Blake. His releases on the Jazzprint label include Platterback with Westbrook & Company, L'ascenseur/The Lift with The Westbrook Trio, Waxeywork Show with The Village Band and a reissue on CD and DVD of the Westbrooks' 1980s jazz cabaret Mama Chicago. Reissues on BGO include Citadel/Room 315 and London Bridge is Broken Down, and, on the Swiss label Hatology, On Duke's Birthday and Westbrook Rossini.

Mike Westbrook returned to big band work with the formation of The Uncommon Orchestra, a 22-piece ensemble based in the South West of England, combining jazz, rock, pop and classical musicians. The orchestra released its first album (on ASC Records) A Bigger Show, a 'jazz/rock oratorio' with lyrics written and performed by Kate Westbrook with fellow vocalists Martine Waltier and Billy Bottle. Mike also works regularly in The Westbrook Trio with Kate and saxophonist Chris Biscoe. Forthcoming performances include a revival of The Westbrook Blake, featuring the voices of Kate Westbrook and Phil Minton in a Choral Version of his settings of the poetry of William Blake. Currently the 7-piece Westbrook&Company is presenting a new jazz cabaret Paintbox Jane, inspired by the painter Raoul Dufy. Mike also gives solo piano concerts. His latest album PARIS was recorded live in Paris by Jon Hiseman in July 2016. Mike Westbrook was awarded an OBE in 1988, and, in 2004 an Honorary Doctorate of Music by the University of Plymouth."

"Phil Minton comes from Torquay. He played trumpet and sang with the Mike Westbrook Band in the early 60s- Then in dance and rock bands in Europe for the later of part of the decade. He returned to England in 1971, rejoining Westbrook and was involved in many of his projects until the mid 1980's.

For most of the last forty years, Minton has been working as a improvising singer in lots of groups, orchestras, and situations, all over the place. Numerous composers have written music especially for his extended vocal techniques. He has a quartet with Veryan Weston, Roger Turner and John Butcher, and ongoing duos, trios and quartets with above and many other musicians.

Since the eighties, His Feral Choir, where he voice-conducts workshops and concerts for anyone who wants to sing, has performed in over twenty countries."

"Alan Wakeman was born in West London in 1947. He became interested in jazz during the British Trad Jazz boom of the early 1960s leading to him picking up the clarinet at age 14 (his cousin Rick Wakeman giving him his first lesson in his back garden). After playing for three months, Wakeman, together with Rick on piano - the 'only one who knew what he was doing,' put together Drayton Manor Grammar School's first jazz band.

After taking up the alto sax at 16, he got to know Mike Westbrook when the up and coming bandleader came to his school to teach art for a year. By then he had decided to become a professional musician and was having lessons with Charles Chapman (Joe Harriott, Ronnie Ross, Vic Ash, John Barnes, Barbara Thompson, John Williams and Pete Whyman being among the many pupils coming out of the 'Chapman Stable'). He left school at 18 to study clarinet at the London College of Music.

In 1966, Wakeman took up tenor sax, which became his main instrument along with the soprano.

At the age of 20, while playing in a working men's club every weekend with cousin Rick, he became involved with the London jazz scene through his acquaintance with free jazz drummer Paul Lytton. They met when both were in the London Youth Jazz Orchestra (which Wakeman joined after he was heard by Pat Evans). He joined Lytton's quartet for six months, playing every Wednesday night at a club in Tottenham Court Road. Later he and the drummer formed various bands together, from duo to large line-ups. In 1970 they won the G.L.A.A Young Musicians Jazz Award.

His first broadcast for the BBC was in 1968 with The Dave Holdsworth Quartet - Paul Lytton on drums and Harry Miller on bass, and his own octet playing his own compositions in 1969 - Mike Osborne (alto sax) , Alan Skidmore and Wakeman (tenor saxes), Paul Nieman and Paul Rutherford (trombones), John Taylor (piano), Lindsay Cooper (bass) and Paul Lytton (drums).

After leading his own trio in 1970 (with Harry Miller on bass and Lytton on drums), he joined Graham Collier Music, replacing Stan Sulzmann. This lasted for two years and two albums, "Songs For My Father" and "Mosaics", featuring such contemporaries as Harry Beckett, Phil Lee and Geoff Castle. Prior to rejoining Mike Westbrook's band in late 1974, he toured with John Dankworth. Wakeman's debut with Westbrook was on 1975's "Citadel/Room 615", and their collaboration continued with "Love Dream & Variations" (1975), "Bright As Fire" (1980), "The Paris Album" (1981) etc.

In 1975, Wakeman played briefly with pianist Brian Miller's group Impulse. It was then that he came to the attention of John Marshall, Soft Machine's drummer, who attended a gig by this band at the Chestnut's Club. Wakeman was considered as a possible replacement for the departing Allan Holdsworth, but it would be another year before he actually joined Soft Machine, stepping in for Mike Ratledge. He was also an original member of another 'Canterbury Music' group about this time, Alan Gowen's Gilgamesh, but left long before any recordings were made.

Meanwhile, he formed another trio with Nigel Tickler on bass and John Snow on drums.

Wakeman was in Soft Machine from February to July 1976. This line-up was documented on the "Softs" album, recorded during the spring of that year. He left when he was offered a retainer as a member of David Essex's band.

In 1978 together with drummer Nigel Morris and bassist Paul Bridge he founded the trio, Triton. He also wrote a suite for octet which was premiered at the 1979 Camden Jazz Festival.

Other collaborations in the 70's and 80's included Barry Guy's London Jazz Composers Orchestra, The Don Rendell Five, Michael Garrick Sextet, Harry Beckett Band, Stan Tracy Sextet, Henry Lowther's Quarternity and John Williams Baritone Band.

Since then, Wakeman has kept working occasionally with Westbrook, while keeping busy with commercial work."

"Lindsay Cooper (3 March 1951 � 18 September 2013) was an English bassoon and oboe player, composer and political activist. Best known for her work with the band Henry Cow, she was also a member of Comus, National Health, News from Babel and David Thomas and the Pedestrians. She collaborated with a number of musicians, including Chris Cutler and Sally Potter, and co-founded the Feminist Improvising Group. She wrote scores for film and TV and a song cycle Oh Moscow which was performed live around the world in 1987. She also recorded a number of solo albums, including Rags (1980), The Gold Diggers (1983) and Music For Other Occasions (1986).

Cooper was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the late 1970s, but did not disclose it to the musical community until the late 1990s when her illness prevented her from performing live. In September 2013, Cooper died from the illness at the age of 62, 15 years after her retirement."

"Born in 1947, Chris Biscoe was drawn to jazz by hearing Fats Waller, Erroll Garner and Benny Goodman on the radio. Early listening to Lester Young and Stan Getz (Jazz Samba) and Charlie Parker led to him starting to learn alto sax in 1963. Chris is self-taught on sax and clarinet. Turning to tenor sax in 1965, Chris's major influences were Sonny Rollins, Charlie Rouse and Dexter Gordon, but after his tenor was stolen he returned to alto.

While studying at Sussex University Chris met pianist Ben Sidran and made his first recording with Ben in 1970. After graduating in 1968 Chris played gigs in London but soon realised that not reading music was a serious barrier, so under the influence of educator and composer Ken Gibson began to attend rehearsal bands and joined NYJO, with which he made two LPs. He became a professional player in 1973.In 1975 Chris joined Red Brass with Pete Hurt and led by Tony Haynes. The association with Tony continues to this day, including numerous concerts and recordings. In 1979 Chris joined the Mike Westbrook Brass Band, and since then has played in many of Mike's bands, from trio to big band. Mike asked Chris to join 'The Cortege', and this led to him starting to play the baritone sax seriously, which he carried on into the Brass Band, the Westbrook Trio and several records.

In 1986 Chris Biscoe joined the George Russell Anglo American Orchestra for its first tour, staying with the band until the final 80th Birthday Concert in 2003 and making three CDs. Also in 1986 Chris augmented his regular quartet (with Peter Jacobsen) to make the first recording under his name: 'Chris Biscoe Sextet'. The quartet and quintet performed regularly in England in the 1980s and 1990s. He also broadcast and recorded with Pete Hurt ('Lost for Words') and the Brotherhood of Breath ('Country Cooking'). From the 1990s on Chris has been associated with French bassist/composer Didier Levallet in his quartet, tentet, The Orchestre National de Jazz and The Brotherhood Heritage, touring and making 4 CDs.BiographyChris started to learn clarinet in the early 1970s, picking up the rarely used alto clarinet in 1975. This instrument he featured in the improvising quartet Full Monte, in various Westbrook bands, with The Liam Noble Group ('In the Meantime'), with the long-running groups exploring the music of Charles Mingus ('Profiles of Mingus') and in The Profiles Quartet with Tony Kofi dedicated to Eric Dolphy ('Gone in the Air' and 'Live at Campus West'). Chris is now playing alto clarinet and baritone sax in Two of a Mind.

In most of these bands Chris has also played alto sax, and soprano sax, which he started to play around 1970. The baritone sax has often been a separate strand, in the John Williams Baritone Band, with the Hermeto Pascoal Big Band, The New York Composers Orchestra and The Dedication Orchestra. Chris Biscoe and Allison Neale joined forces in 2015 to bring to the fore the sense of collective improvisation on standard material so brilliantly demonstrated by Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan."

"Georgina Emma Mary Born, OBE, FBA (born 15 November 1955) is a British academic, anthropologist and musician. As a musician she is known as Georgie Born and is known for her work in Henry Cow and with Lindsay Cooper.

Born was born on 15 November 1955 in Wheatley, Oxfordshire, England. She is the granddaughter of the physicist and Nobel laureate Max Born, daughter of the pharmacologist Gustav Born and Ann Plowden-Wardlaw, stepdaughter of the American theatre director and writer George Mully, and cousin of the pop singer Olivia Newton-John. She is the partner of social theorist and political geographer Andrew Barry.

Born studied the cello and piano at the Royal College of Music in London, and performed classical and modern music including stints with the Michael Nyman Band, the Penguin Cafe Orchestra and the Flying Lizards. She also studied for a year at the Chelsea School of Art.

In June 1976, she joined the English avant-rock group Henry Cow as bass guitarist and cellist, following the departure of John Greaves. Henry Cow was in a period of intensive touring and Born toured Europe with the group for two years.

After Henry Cow, Born performed and recorded with a number of groups and musicians, including fellow Henry Cow member Lindsay Cooper, National Health, Bruford, and Mike Westbrook, particularly as a cellist in the Westbrook Orchestra. Her playing is prominent on Westbrook's album, The Cortege. Late in 1977, Born, Cooper, Sally Potter and Maggie Nichols founded the Feminist Improvising Group. She also recorded with The Raincoats, and played improvised music with Lol Coxhill, Steve Beresford, David Toop and others as a member of the London Musicians' Collective.

During the 1980s, Born was an occasional member of Derek Bailey's Company, and played cello and bass guitar on numerous soundtracks for television and film for composers Lindsay Cooper and Mike Westbrook, as well as the soundtrack for the Stephen Poliakoff play Caught on a Train (1980). She had a walk-on part in Sally Potter's film The Gold Diggers (1983).

Born studied anthropology at University College London, gaining her BSc in 1982 and her PhD (supervised by Michael Gilsenan and Michael Rowlands) in 1989. Her first academic job (1986-89) was in the Department of Human Sciences at Brunel University, where she assisted Roger Silverstone in setting up the degree in Communication and Information Studies. Born moved to a lectureship in the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths' College, London (1989-97), where she worked alongside Dick Hebdige.

In 1997 Born began work for an Assistant Lectureship in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge. In 2000 she was appointed to a Lectureship, in 2003 to Reader in Sociology, Anthropology and Music, and in 2006 to Professor of Sociology, Anthropology and Music at Cambridge, a title that recognises her interdisciplinary contributions.

At Cambridge, Born teaches the sociology and anthropology of culture, media, music, and ethnographic method in the Department of Sociology. She is responsible for the only dedicated lecture course on contemporary media in the social sciences.

Born is a member of Cambridge's Screen Media Group, which in 2006 launched Cambridge's first cross-Schools master's degree, Screen Media and Cultures. Born founded and directs the Cambridge Media Research Group which runs a seminar series and related events. In 2005 she organised a conference at Cambridge on the legacy of Laura Mulvey's essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema".

Between 1996 and 1998, Born was a visiting professor in the Institute of Musicology at the University of Aarhus, and from 1997 to 1998 Senior Research Fellow at King's College, Cambridge. From 1998 to 2006 she was Fellow and Director of Studies in Social and Political Sciences at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Born is Honorary Professor of Anthropology at University College London and a Fellow of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University. She is also a Fellow of the Australian Cultural Sociology Association and of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism.

n 2010 Born was awarded an Advanced Grant by the European Research Council for a major programme of research on the transformation of music by digital media. Subsequently, she moved to become Professor of Music and Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Since 2012, she has also been a Fellow of Mansfield College, Oxford. In 2014 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy."