Michael John David Westbrook (born 21 March 1936) is an English
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
pianist, composer, and writer of orchestrated jazz pieces. He is married to the vocalist, librettist and painter Kate Westbrook.
Early work
Mike Westbrook was born in
High Wycombe
High Wycombe, often referred to as Wycombe ( ), is a market town in Buckinghamshire, England. Lying in the valley of the River Wye, Buckinghamshire, River Wye surrounded by the Chiltern Hills, it is west-northwest of Charing Cross in London, ...
Torquay
Torquay ( ) is a seaside town in Devon, England, part of the unitary authority area of Torbay. It lies south of the county town of Exeter and east-north-east of Plymouth, on the north of Tor Bay, adjoining the neighbouring town of Paig ...
. After a spell in accountancy and his
National Service
National service is the system of voluntary government service, usually military service. Conscription is mandatory national service. The term ''national service'' comes from the United Kingdom's National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939.
The ...
The Wire, 1985 (some of it in Germany) he went to art school, studying painting, in Plymouth. There he also began his first bands in 1958, soon joined by such musicians as
John Surman
John Douglas Surman (born 30 August 1944) is an English jazz saxophone, bass clarinet, and synthesizer player, and composer of free jazz and modal jazz, often using themes from folk music. He has composed and performed music for dance performanc ...
,
Lou Gare
Leslie Arthur "Lou" Gare (16 June 1939 – 6 October 2017) was a British free-jazz saxophonist born in Rugby, Warwickshire, England, perhaps best known for his works with the improvised music ensemble AMM and playing with musicians such as Ed ...
and
Keith Rowe
Keith may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Keith (given name), includes a list of people and fictional characters
* Keith (surname)
* Keith (singer), American singer James Keefer (born 1949)
* Baron Keith, a line of Scottish barons ...
.
After moving to London in 1962, Westbrook led numerous bands, large and small, and played regularly at the Old Place and the Little Theatre Club at Garrick Yard, St Martin's Lane. Together with Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, Westbrook shared the role of house-band at
Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club
Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club is a jazz club that has operated in Soho, London, since 1959.
History
The club opened on 30 October 1959 in a basement at 39 Gerrard Street in London's Soho district. It was set up and managed by musicians Ronnie Sc ...
.
He became a key figure in the development of
British jazz
British jazz is a form of music derived from American jazz. It reached Britain through recordings and performers who visited the country while it was a relatively new genre, soon after the end of World War I. Jazz began to be played by British ...
, producing several big-band records for the Deram label, with the newly formed Mike Westbrook Concert Band, between 1967 and 1969. These featured such musicians as Surman,
Mike Osborne
Michael Evans Osborne (28 September 1941 – 19 September 2007) was an English jazz alto saxophonist, pianist, and clarinetist who was a member of the band Brotherhood of Breath in the 1960s and 1970s.
Biography
Mike Osborne was born in Her ...
and Harry Miller. The band varied in size from 10 to 26 musicians.Ian Carr, Digby Fairweather, Brian Priestly (eds), ''The Rough Guide to Jazz'', 3rd edition, 2004.
In 1968 his band made their international debut at the
Montreux Festival
The Montreux Jazz Festival (formerly Festival de Jazz Montreux and Festival International de Jazz Montreux) is a music festival in Switzerland, held annually in early July in Montreux on the Lake Geneva shoreline. It is the second-largest annual ...
with Malcolm Griffiths, Alan Jackson, Harry Miller, Mike Osborne and John Surman.
His music was given exposure on BBC Radio, on the ''Jazz Club'' and ''Jazz Scene'' programmes on BBC Radio One, and he started to act as a presenter and commentator on new British Jazz through 1968 and 1969. He was featured on BBC TV, when ''Jazz Scene'' transferred to the BBC 2 TV service. The station broadcast The Mike Westbrook Concert Band performing 'Metropolis', based on Westbrook's impressions of first visiting London, on Tuesday 25 November 1969 at 20.45 from the Ronnie Scott Club. The British Arts Council awarded Westbrook a bursary to develop 'Metropolis' for an enlarged Concert Band, and the jazz suite was further broadcast on BBC Radio Three on Friday 9 January 1970 at 21.00. Westbrook's compositions and performances were regularly broadcast by the BBC throughout the 1970s and 1980s. 'Metropolis' was recorded at Landsdowne Studios, London, on 3, 4 and 5 August 1971 and released by on RCA Victor in the UK and Japan. A further major extended orchestral composition, 'Citadel/Room 315', featuring saxophonist
John Surman
John Douglas Surman (born 30 August 1944) is an English jazz saxophone, bass clarinet, and synthesizer player, and composer of free jazz and modal jazz, often using themes from folk music. He has composed and performed music for dance performanc ...
, was recorded in March 1975.
The 1970s saw a wide range of different projects. ''Cosmic Circus'', jointly founded with John Fox, who was also a composer, specialised in large scale, one-off high technology shows involving high-divers, tight-rope, carnival processions and more. It was part of ''Earthrise Tour'' in the UK (May 1970 to October 1971). This included also singer/vocalist
Norma Winstone
Norma Ann Winstone MBE (born 23 September 1941) is an English jazz singer and lyricist. With a career spanning more than 50 years, she is best known for her wordless improvisations. Musicians with whom she has worked include Michael Garrick, ...
who performed on several of the band's albums at the time.
Adrian Mitchell drew Mike Westbrook in for his musical ''Tyger'' on the life of
William Blake
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. ...
for the Royal National Theatre. This would become a major influence on Mike Westbrook's work (see paragraph on later work below).
In 1972 and 1973, he also worked in the context of his jazz-rock band Solid Gold Cadillac. The most consequential effect of this was the participation of
Phil Minton
Phil Minton (born 2 November 1940) is a British avant-garde jazz/ free-improvising vocalist and trumpeter.
Minton is a highly dramatic baritone who tends to specialize in literary texts: he has sung lyrics by William Blake with Mike Westbrook' ...
. His unmistakable voice would feature in many of Westbrook's later projects. A live performance of ''Solid Gold Cadillac'' (at the Paris Theatre in London) has been repeatedly broadcast by BBC Radio 6 between 2002 and 2007.
In March 1977, the Mike Westbrook Brass Band,
avant-rock
Experimental rock, also called avant-rock, is a subgenre of rock music that pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique or which experiments with the basic elements of the genre. Artists aim to liberate and innovate, with ...
group
Henry Cow
Henry Cow were an English experimental rock group, founded at the University of Cambridge in 1968 by multi-instrumentalists Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson. Henry Cow's personnel fluctuated over their decade together, but drummer Chris Cutler, b ...
and folk singer Frankie Armstrong merged to form the Orckestra. The ensemble performed in London and several cities in Europe, their last concert being in
Bordeaux
Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefect ...
, France, in May 1978.
Later work
His work for the theatre began with Adrian Mitchell's ''Tyger'', a celebration of
William Blake
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. ...
, staged by the Royal National Theatre in 1971. This became a vehicle for his Brass Band of the 1970s and 1980s and the LP ''The Westbrook Blake – Bright As Fire'' followed on in 1980. A revised and expanded version of the work was re-recorded in 1997 and named ''Glad Day''. Westbrook recorded the poem " The Human Abstract" in 1982.
The Brass Band also recorded ''Mama Chicago'', described as a "Jazz Cabaret", which featured the voices of Phil Minton and Kate Westbrook. The album was released on CD for the first time in 2007. More recently Mike Westbrook has developed the work further and it now includes an adult choir and on occasion, a children's choir at live performances.
Further works of note include ''On Duke's Birthday'', which was dedicated to the memory of Duke Ellington, which was reissued on CD in the summer of 2007, ''Big Band Rossini'', which was featured in the 1992 BBC Proms, and ' (2002), commissioned by BBC Radio 3, which brings together jazz and classical musicians in the New Westbrook Orchestra. Westbrook was awarded an OBE in 1988, and in 2004 the
University of Plymouth
The University of Plymouth is a public research university based predominantly in Plymouth, England, where the main campus is located, but the university has campuses and affiliated colleges across South West England. With students, it is the ...
awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Music.
Other projects include ART WOLF inspired by the life and work of the Alpine painter
Caspar Wolf
Caspar Wolf ( Muri, Aargau, 3 May 1735 – Heidelberg, 6 October 1783) was a Swiss painter, known mostly for his dramatic paintings of the Alps. He was strongly influenced by Albrecht von Haller's poems on the Alps, and the Sturm und Dra ...
. In this Kate and Mike Westbrook are joined by saxophonists Pete Whyman and
Chris Biscoe
Chris Biscoe (born 5 February 1947, East Barnet, Hertfordshire, England) is an English jazz multi-instrumentalist, a player of the alto, soprano, tenor and baritone saxophone, the alto clarinet, piccolo and flute. Biscoe is most notable for hi ...
. In another project the couple have been joined by four leading
Devon
Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devo ...
musicians to form the Village Band. The acoustic brass band perform many jazz standards and an original piece, the Waxeywork Show, with music written by Mike and text by Kate. The band perform mainly in the Devon and
Cornwall
Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...
area and in 2006 they performed several times at the
London Jazz Festival
The London Jazz Festival is a music festival held every November. It takes place in London venues such as the Barbican and the Royal Festival Hall and in smaller jazz clubs, such as Ronnie Scott's and the Vortex Jazz Club. It is produced by Ser ...
.
More recent projects include ''Fine 'n Yellow'', a piece written in celebration of the lives of Margery and John Styles, two friends who were founders of the Westbrook newsletter, ''The Smith's Academy Informer''. The piece was recorded and CD copies were given to subscribers of the newsletter. It has since had a general CD release. Kate and Mike were once again joined by saxophonists Pete Whyman and Chris Biscoe. Steve Berry played bass and Jon Hiseman featured on drums. The piece received its first public performance in a concert that marked Mike Westbrook's 75th birthday at Kings Place in London on 2 April 2011. The musicians at the performance with Kate and Mike Westbrook were Chris Biscoe, Chris Caldwell and Andy Tweed, saxophones; Karen Street, saxophone and accordion; Steve Berry, bass; and Simon Pearson, drums. Another work was premiered at this concert, ''The Serpent Hit'', which used the above musicians but without Steve Berry. ''The Serpent Hit'', like ''Fine 'n Yellow'', has texts by Kate Westbrook and music by Mike Westbrook. Yet another project finds Mike working with some of the finest west country musicians in ''The Mike Westbrook Big Band''. They play a number of Westbrook originals and Mike's arrangements of pieces by Duke Ellington and others.
In 2012, the trio released ''Three into Wonderfull'', an album digitally re-mastered by Jon Hiseman, presenting a cross-section of the group's recordings over three decades as well as previously unreleased material from the mid-1990s.
The Mike Westbrook Big Band, also now known as The Uncommon Orchestra, released an album called ''A Bigger Show'' in 2016. Recorded in concert at the Barnfield Theatre (Exeter) by Jon Hiseman and Miles Ashton, it is a reworking of ''the Waxeywork Show'' originally performed by The Village Band. The 21-member line-up include long-term Westbrook collaborators such as Dave Holdsworth and Alan Wakeman, as well as younger, rising musicians.
Mike Westbrook was 80 years old in 2016 and as part of the celebrations recorded his first solo piano album for 40 years, entitled ''PARIS''. It was recorded live over two nights at Hélène Aziza's art gallery in Paris by drummer Jon Hiseman.
Discography
Albums
* ''Celebration'' (1967) ( Deram)
* ''Release'' (1969) UK LP has a 1969 publishing date on the label and 1968 on the sleeve, most internet sources suggest 1968 as the year of release. (Deram)
* ''Marching Song – Volumes 1 And 2'' (1969) (Deram)
* ''Love Songs'' (1970) (Deram)
* ''Metropolis'' (1971) ( RCA Neon)
* ''Tyger'' (1971) (
RCA
The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...
On Duke's Birthday
''On Duke's Birthday'' is a live album by the Mike Westbrook Orchestra performing a five song suite dedicated to the memory of Duke Ellington which was recorded in France in 1984 and released on the Hat Hut label in 1985.Hathut, 1985)
* ''The Ass'' (1985)
* ''London Bridge Is Broken Down'' (2 CDs) (1986)
* ''Pier Rides'' (1986)
* '' Westbrook-Rossini'' (hat ART, 1987)
* '' Westbrook-Rossini, Zürich Live 1986'' (hat ART, 1994)
* ''Off Abbey Road'' (1989)
* ''Stage Set'' (1995)
* ''Bar Utopia'' (1996)
* ''Love or Infatuation'' (1997)
* ''The Orchestra of Smith's Academy'' (1998)
* ''Platterback'' (1998)
* ''Glad Day (Settings of William Blake)'' (1999)
* ''L'ascenseur: Lift'' (2002)
* ' (2003)
* ''Art Wolf'' (2005)
* ''Waxeywork Show'' (2008)
* ''Fine 'n' Yellow'' (2009)
* ''allsorts'' (2009)
* ''Mama Chicago'' – DVD (2011) (Gonzo: Gonzo HST052DVD)
* ''Three Into Wonderfull'' (2012) ( Voiceprint: VP 557, compilation)
* ''The Serpent Hit'' (2013) ( Westbrook Records: WR 001)
* ''Glad Day – Live'' – DVD/CD (2014) (Westbrook Records: WR002DVD-5 / WR002CD-2)
* ''A Bigger Show'' – CD (2016) (ASC Records: ascd 162/163)
* ''PARIS'' – CD (2016) (ASC Records: ascd 166)
*''Starcross Bridge'' – CD (2017) – (hatology 754)
*''Last Night At The Old Place'' – CD (2018) – (Cadillac SGCCD016)
*''Catania'' – CD (2019) – (Westbrook Records WR004)
*''Love and Understanding: Citadel/Room 315 Sweden '74'' – 2LP + CD – (2020) (My Only Desire Records MOD003)
*''London Bridge Live in Zurich 1990'' – CD (2022) – (Westbrook Records WR011)
Singles
* "A Life of Its Own" (1969)
* "The Human Abstract" (1982) ( Original Records: ABO 8)
Bibliography
*Ian Carr, ''Music Outside: Contemporary Jazz in Britain'', 2nd edn. London: Northway Publications, 2008,
List of experimental big bands
Experimental jazz big band
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands orig ...