Tim Garland

Few world-class jazz improvisers are comparably imaginative composers, but the British reeds player Tim Garland is that rarity. The Guardian

There is no one who can more convincingly unite the jazz and European classical music idioms. The Observer

Throughout an international career starting in the late 1980’s, Tim Garland has become known as a unique polymath in the UK’s music scene.

His first break as saxophonist was joining Ronnie Scotts band age 23. Later he was to join Chick Corea as a regular member of several globe-trotting projects over a seventeen year period including The Vigil. Playing tenor and soprano saxes, bass clarinet and flute, he also won a Grammy for his symphonic orchestrations on Corea’s The New Crystal Silence album from 2007.

Garland has fulfilled commissions from several of the worlds top orchestras, including  a double concerto from the LSO, a piano concerto for Gwilym Simcock from The Royal Northern Sinfonia, with whom he went on to record three CDs, a cello and sax concerto from the CBSO, and a sax concerto from the BBC Concert Orchestra.

His concert works continue to celebrate the fertile ground between modern composition and jazz. Whilst his creative arranging skills have won much praise from such diverse artists as Jean Luc Ponty, John Patitucci, The Royal Holloway and Westminster Choirs, the Catalan National Cobla Group, the LPO, the London Session Orchestra, NYJO as well as Chick Corea.

His work is often inspired by, but not limited to, the jazz idiom, whilst his celebrated virtuosity as a saxophonist maintains his position as one the UK’s most unique and authentic jazz voices.

In 2016 he premiered Re:Focus (a re-imagining of the Getz/Sauter project of 1962 Focus) to a full house at London’s Wigmore Hall, and also his Luca’s Winter, a 100-minute work for big band, orchestra and narrator at Manchester’s Royal Northern College Of Music where he held an international post as research fellow.

As a band leader and co-leader he is responsible for the much of the output of the groups; Lammas, The Underground Orchestra, Storms / Nocturnes (feat. Joe Locke and Geoffrey Keezer), Acoustic Triangle, the last few years of Bill Bruford’s Earthworks, and Lighthouse, (feat. Gwilym Simcock and Asaf Sirkis).

He has won awards and nominations from The Parliamentary Jazz Awards, The Worshipful Company Of Musicians, BASCA’s British Composer Awards and won CD of the year in 2016 from Jazzwise for his album ONE.

Photo credit: Stefan Booth