Time: 8.00 – 11.00pm

Tickets: £12

Personnel

Tim Whitehead – sax
David Gordon – piano
Dave Whitford – bass
Tom Hooper – drums

Tim Whitehead was born in Liverpool, 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 fellow pupil, the now knighted, Sir Simon Rattle. From this promising musical beginning, Tim decided to follow a career in Law, but was pulled back to professional music, and more specifically jazz, soon after qualifying.
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 and 80s 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 80s 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, Pete Saberton and Pete Jacobsen.
In this period he also worked with Jim Mullen in The Morrissey Mullen Band and Meantime, and The Breakfast Band with whom he recorded and played many times opposite the Cuban Band Irakere at Ronnie Scott’s Club.
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, Contemporary composer Colin Riley and Tim won the Peter Whittingham Award to collaborate on, 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 jazz musicians’ co-operative WayOutWest, based in south west London’s Richmond area, which he continued to chair until 2010, presenting regular performances at the Ram Jam Club in Kingston, The Orange Tree in Richmond, The legendary Bull’s Head in Barnes and at west-side theatres as well as workshops and discussion groups.
Riley, with the Orchestra Viva.
In November 2007 he featured with BBC New Generations Artist and Pat Metheny pianist, 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. In 2008-9 Tim toured and recorded a new work co-written with Colin Riley and Liam Noble Nonsense, featuring settings of Children’s Poet Laureate Michael Rosen’s two books of Nonsense poetry, which was performed at The Queen Elizabeth Hall at the Southbank Centre, for The London Jazz Festival 2008.
In 2009 he was the first ever musician Artist in Residence at Tate Britain (funded by an award from The Leverhulme Trust), to research and compose music in response to the work of JMW Turner. During the residency he wrote Colour Beginnings,a series of compositions written from transcribed improvisations performed in front of and in response to a selection of JMW Turner’s watercolour sketches. The work was premiered at Tate Britain in November 2009 following a series of lecture demonstrations, and young people’s workshops at Tate Britain in October. The performance was also recorded for release in 2010 and filmed for a profile on the project by Gwynhelek Productions.
December 2009 saw a collaboration with Colin Riley and The Royal College of Music String Orchestra, to perform Landscapes With Birds by Riley for tenor and soprano saxes, which Tim performed with them at St James’s Church Piccadilly in London, and which was also performed at The Royal College of Music in January 2010.
In 2010 he continued touring Nonsense with Michael Rosen and The Homemade Orchestra, remained active in the Way Out West co-operative,and organised a fund-raising concert at The Rose Theatre in Kingston for the charity Parents for Inclusion, for whom he served as a trustee for 7 years.
In Autumn he toured and released the album Colour Beginnings, to critical acclaim, receiving a four star review in The Guardian, five stars in The BBC Music Magazine and three in The Times. He was also nominated and shortlisted for The British Composer of the Year Awards 2010. The Guardian invited him to write a feature article on Colour Beginnings and his residency at Tate Britain which was ublished on September 24th.
In 2011 Colour Beginnings was again toured from April onwards, and work began on a new project for young children with Michael Rosen and The Homemade Orchestra, launched in January 2013.
Colour Beginnings was shortlisted again, this time for the Parliamentary All Party Jazz Awards 2011 Jazz Album of the Year, and performed at The Royal Academy of Arts in The London Jazz Festival.
In 2012 he wrote a new theatre production for young people with Colin Riley, The Homemade Orchestra and the children’s poet Michael Rosen, initially collaborating with The Little Angel Theatre, London, called Centrally Heated Knickers (a book of poems on science by Michael Rosen).
In May 2012 Colour Beginnings was performed on WDR German Radio by Tim’s Personal Standards Quartet.
In 2013 Tim toured Centrally Heated Knickers in the UK with Michael Rosen and The Homemade Orchestra, including performances at The Science Museum, The Pleasance Theatre and other theatres nationwide.
In 2014 he premiered Turner and The Thames at the Southbank, commissioned by The London Jazz Festival, and written from improvisations filmed and recorded at locations on The Thames from which JMW Turner painted.
In 2015 he recorded Wake Up Call, a compilation of 17 compositions for sextet, quintet, quartet and duo, commissioned by music publishers Sony /EMI
From 2016-2018 Tim stepped back from major projects following the death of his wife, but continued playing gigs in UK and abroad.
In winter 2019-20 he toured the UK with the award winning pianist Giovanni Mirabassi and his quartet with whom he earlier recorded Lucky Boys.

Education
Tim says of education: “I see it as an inseparable part of my music making. I have taught jazz, improvisation, composition and sax playing at Brunel University (6 years), WAC Weekend Arts College (8-25 year old students) [6 years], Trinity College of Music [2 years], ‘What’s Your Story?’ jazz summer schools [4 years, co-director], Roehampton University [3 years] and many jazz education visiting workshops and masterclasses attached to gigs and major projects such as ‘Nonesense’ and ‘Centrally Heated Knickers’ with Michael Rosen, ‘Colour Beginnings’ at Tate Britain.“

Major projects, commissions and collaborations often rise to prominence in a rare welter of funding and publicity, only to disappear beneath the waves of the next new thing. Fortunately people sometimes recognise the intrinsic value of their contents well after the world-changing event is over, and maybe even re-evaluate them. Personal Standards Vol.3 is a synthesis of that re-evaluation.
Tim has been fortunate enough to have been invited and funded to write several major projects, including for the London Jazz Festival Nine Sketches of England for Solo Saxophone, and Turner and The Thames. As Artist In Residence at Tate Britain, he wrote, premiered and recorded Colour Beginnings, which received a 5-star review in The BBC Music Magazine.
Personal Standards (volume 1) was the expression of a long-held desire to record popular and personally influential songs from his life history in the context of an acoustic jazz quartet. It was rewarded by becoming a jazz album of the year in the BBC Music Magazine and album of the week in The Guardian. It led to further adventures which are reaching their maturity in Personal Standards Vol.3.
Tim has drawn forth tunes from all those sources, including Skies Sketch Book page 3 from Colour Beginnings, The Thames at Isleworth Ferry from Turner and The Thames, A Shout To Wing (written on the structure of the standard Without a Song) from Personal standards Vol.1, and You Wish (written on the structure of Stevie Wonder’s I Wish).
You’re Not Alone (Tim’s tune, not Michael Jackson’s), recorded at Ronnie Scott’s Club, failed to make the cut onto the album Lucky Boys with Italian pianist Giovanni Mirabassi, but the enthusiasm of the present quartet encouraged Tim to include it in Personal Standards Vol.3.
The introductory arrangement of the beautiful standard My One and Only Love, is an attempt to describe the transition from the ethereal universal questions of love into its manifestation for human beings one to one:
You fill my eager heart with such desire
Every kiss you give sets my soul on fire
I give myself in sweet surrender
My one and only love
Tim says: “It’s a joy to bring together all these apparently disparate influences under one roof, which, like the strengths of human community, produce something remarkable in their interaction, with the crucial interception of these perceptive musicians, David Gordon, Tom Hooper and Dave Whitford, to catalyse the elements.”

The Quartet
David Gordon – piano
Equally at home playing jazz with his trio, and harpsichord in baroque music ensembles, David brings an intense musical imagination and skill to the quartet, and a listening capacity in ensemble.
He says of himself: “While I enjoy travelling and touring, I’m equally interested in functioning locally, within the community, in which I think music has an important part to play. Writing, rehearsing and performing the music for the community opera – or musical play – Semmerwater for the 2009 Swaledale Festival was a fantastic buzz. Collecting an AMI award for it in King’s Place in the heart of Metropolitan London was another.”

Tom Hooper – drums
Another versatile and imaginative percussionist, equally at home playing the brilliant and demanding material in David Gordon’s trio and violinist Chris Garrick’s bands, as he is heard playing with Grace Jones and gospel music.He brings a musical intelligence, passion and commitment to the quartet.

Dave Whitford – double bass
Dave has a wealth of playing experience in London, the UK and worldwide. A strong, lyrical, and musically broad bassist with a secure perception of the bass role in ensemble and a virtuoso soloist, he has worked with The Frank Harrison Trio, Hans Koller Jazz Ensemble, Harrison Smith Quartet, The John Aram Quintet, Liam Noble Trio, Pavillon, Satori (19), The NDR Big Band and The Strayhorn Project.

“He is a prodigious tenor player whose graceful compositions always rise above the mere technicalities of the conservatoire… Amid the crowd of anonymous, garrulous and hard-edged tenor axophonists, Tim Whitehead’s music is marked by a sense of grace and economy” Clive Davis, The Times

“Those of us who have caught him live… have been left in blinking disbelief. It’s not just his mastery of the tenor saxophone, phenomenal though it is, but the absolute conviction of his playing that is so impressive” Dave Gelly, The Observer/ BBC