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John Seeley
He started learning the clarinet at a young age, and while he was studying for his “A” levels he heard Artie Shaw’s Clarinet Concerto and decided to take a fifth in music and pursue a career in music. He went on to study at the prestigious Dartington College of Arts, a leading contemporary arts college where he studied with musicologist Frank Denyer and Bob Gilmore. While there he became more focused on jazz through his work with jazz pianist Lewis Riley and clarinettist Charlie Hearnshaw, whilst continuing his classical clarinet with Michael Langdon-Davis. John now started teaching jazz workshops with a youth project called SaMS, and took up the tenor saxophone. During this period he undertook research projects spending six months in New Orleans, where he performed regularly around the city. After leaving university he studied with clarinettist Richie Howard, and then pursued an MA in music at Middlesex University where he studied with composer Francois Evans, and wrote projects on Postmodernism in Jazz, the Cultural Aesthetics of Free Jazz, Jazz Workshops, and the style of BBC rising-star tenor saxophonist Simon Spillett. He now studies with Simon and Alan Barnes and as well as his work with Interplay he takes part in a range of performance and recording projects.
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Tony Pethen
He was interested in playing music from his early teens, and started his playing career improvising on the recorder in the loo! The first time he got his hands on an ancient alto sax he was hooked - all that shiny pipe-work and the wonderful emotive sound it made! He took an interest in jazz early on, starting with early blues like Bessie Smith, moving on to Louis Armstrong, through swing to Bird and Diz, all within a couple of years.
At Uni in the late 50's jazz was king; rock was in its early days and Tony joined a swing band, playing dance gigs every week in the Student's Union. His finest hour was being part of a 19 piece big band that reached the finals of the Nationwide Student Jazz competition, playing in the Fairfield Hall and coming second. His influences on sax were Bird, and especially Cannonball Adderley, because of the amazing energy he generated in his solos. These were the days when 'Kind of Blue' and 'Blues and the abstract Truth' were brand new!
Decades passed without any serious playing as job and family took centre stage, but once bitten by the music bug there's no escape. He started playing again 10 years ago. He has gigged with The Brian Cox All Stars in the Midlands, and Gill Ward, The Jill Adams Band and Ron Spack in the south Essex area.
Amongst british sax players he enjoys particularly Alan Barnes and Tony Kofi, and enjoys a wide range of jazz styles from swing to hard bop and beyond citing musicians as disparate as Ruby Braff, Art Farmer, Stan Getz and John Coltrane as influences.
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Martin Gibbons
He started listening to jazz and playing bass at school, more years ago than he cares to remember. In the early days he played some rock but soon moved on to blues which was having a boom in the sixties. He took his jazz seriously, around 1991, playing with several bands covering all types of music including the Doris Day Story Tribute Show and the David Charles Big Band.
He studied first with Tracy Warren then Alan Foreman and lists his major influences as Paul Chambers, Ray Brown and Charlie Mingus and more recently Scott Lafaro.
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Dave Warren
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Although inspired by the likes of Santana and Zappa, Dave Warren’s musical beginnings were in new wave bands in the 70s and 80s such as Charming Farming and 140 People. In 1985 he put his guitar to one side to concentrate on composing and recording avant garde music concrete. This was occasionally performed at small venues to small audiences in a duo called Look No Hands with Phil Wills. Considerable miming on stage was involved hence the name. After abstaining from music for several years while travelling around the world, Dave returned to the UK to begin work on keyboard based soundtracks for film and theatre. He also joined an electronic dance music act, Seventh Heaven, which performed across the south east and at a Strassenfest in Germany in front of a displeased heavy metal crowd. He returned to rock guitar in the 1990s but soon developed an urge for more sophisticated forms of music and began studying jazz guitar with Southend’s Tony Sandeman in 1999. Dave formed the vocal based jazz outfit Jazmin shortly after with singer Marion Walker and went on to perform gigs all over Essex and London. Dave is a full time guitar teacher and also runs workshops every week for local bands and groups of guitarists. He cites Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass as major influences and plays a Gibson 335 guitar. He has recently branched out into teaching and playing the ukulele as well and runs a ukulele orchestra, D’Ukes, which plays at ukulele festivals across Britain.
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Richard Dray
He got the jazz bug at an early age thrilling to the sounds of Bird, Diz and Monk. He spent his youth in the London Jazz clubs listening to the great bands of Tubby Hayes, Joe Harriott and John Stevens. Following the chequered career of drummer Phil Seaman lead to a interest in the blues and when much later in life he started playing the drums he was soon working around the pubs in North London with various blues Bands. There followed a spell with Essex band Snagge playing the London fringe clubs including Kashmirs and Taylors before joining jazz diva Gill Ward. Since then he has enjoyed working with many of the local jazz musicians including Martin Hathaway, Ban Banks, Geoff Collins and Ron Spack. He continues to study with drummers Trevor Tomkins and Tristan Maillot and plays a vintage Gretsch kit and endorses Agner drumsticks.
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