Mike Westbrook

Michael John David ' Mike ' Westbrook ( born March 21, 1936 in High Wycombe, England ) is a British jazz musician (piano, tuba, band leader, compositions, arrangements ). His work is " responsible for the Emancipation of the British jazz " of American models (Ian Carr) highly.

Life and work

Westbrook, son of a piano teacher and an amateur drummer, had first lessons with his mother, learned to play the instrument - as later Trumpet - but largely self-taught. Until 1962 he studied at Plymouth and London fine arts, where he was also involved in jazz, but as a composer and arranger without formal training. In 1960 he organized at Plymouth Arts Centre a jazz workshop with a band, who was, inter alia, John Surman and Keith Rowe. In 1962 he moved to London where he worked as an art teacher, and founded a firm, six-member group to which belonged Surman ( performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1968). In addition, in 1967 he founded the large-format, Mike Westbrook Concert Band ' with which he performed his longer compositions and were among the musicians as Harry Beckett, Kenny Wheeler, Alan Skidmore, Mike Osborne, Paul Rutherford, Michael Gibbs, Barre Phillips and Harry Miller. Between 1970 and 1972 he conducted with John Fox (, Welfare State Theatre Group '), the multi-media group, Cosmic Circus '. With his group, Solid Gold Cadillac ' he played 1971-1973 Jazz Rock; thereby, inter alia, guitarist Chris Spedding and singer Phil Minton were involved. In 1973 he founded his, Brass Band 'to perform with her jazz and vaudeville productions in theater and television. They formed the core of its major occupations for special projects. Together with his wife, singer Kate Westbrook, and saxophonist Chris Biscoe, he founded a trio; partly it occurs with Kate Westbrook to a duo.

Since the 1970s he has presented a variety of projects - a contemporary version of Rossini's opera William Tell with the bassoonist Lindsay Cooper, as well as a jazz version of the Beatles album Abbey Road. Other projects were dealing with the work of William Blake or the tradition of Duke Ellington, as in 1984 On Duke's Birthday. Musically, Westbrook made ​​for an extension of the material in which he made popular songs, rock, opera arias and ethnic music as the basis for jazz improvisation in these productions. The project, The Cortege ', which was awarded in 1982 with the Grand Prix du Disque Montreux, is considered magnum opus. In 1986, she toured with the extemporary Dance Theater under the choreography of Emilyn Claid.

Westbrook has been traveling with his various projects all across Europe, but also overseas. It led to some of his works with radio orchestras in Rome, Venice, Stockholm and Copenhagen; He also created music for television dramas and documentaries. " Again and again, like Westbrook to convey highly entertaining way between jazz and classical music, folk music and rock, vaudeville and workshop. " (Eric Ericson forced )

Lexigraphic entries

• Richard Cook: Jazz Encyclopedia. Penguin, London 2007; ISBN 978-0-14-102646-6
• Wolf Kampmann: Reclam Jazz Encyclopedia. Reclam, Stuttgart, 2003; ISBN 3-15-010528-5
• Martin Kunzler: Jazz Encyclopedia Vol 2 Rowohlt, Reinbek 2002 ( 2nd edition ); ISBN 3-499-16513-9