JAZZ PIANO

Welcome to Charlie’s jazz piano page. Jazz piano playing was a regular part of his freelance work for many years, though it took more of a back seat once he began to work more seriously as a choral conductor. Now resident in Brooklyn, New York, it was a joy to spend the COVID-19 lockdown playing and writing jazz regularly again, this time weekly with local bassplayer Byron Isaacs. Videos below, all recorded in August and September 2020.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, he was regularly involved as a sideman pianist on the London jazz scene with the likes of Brian Abrahams, Bobby Wellins, Chris Wells and the Frank Williams African Jazz Quintet, and played at Ronnie Scott’s with the award-winning Guildhall Big Band, playing his own arrangements. He also worked with a number of the UK’s top jazz singers, including Christine Tobin and Imogen Ryall. Before he moved to New York in 2007, he often led the monthly Sunday night Jazz Vespers at the church of St Ann’s and St Agnes in the City of London, where he played piano, and directed the pro jazz trio and a volunteer choir of jazz singers.

There were also set-piece performances with London’s Eclectic Voices, which combines jazz with classical music performance. One highlight in June 2002 was the British premiere at the Purcell Room (South Bank Center) of his own specially devised jazz version of Faure’s Requiem arranged for choir, rhythm section and two horns. The Purcell Room performance featured Kenny Wheeler (trumpet), Kennet Jonson (saxes) and Dill Katz (bass). The Faure has proven popular and was performed again early in 2006 by London chamber choir, Chantage, who won the UK’s ‘BBC Radio 3 Choir of the Year’ competition that year. A new edition of this piece is in preparation in 2021.