Introducing the George King Trio:

In the summer 2003 Jonas, George and Gavin met for the first time at the well-known jam session at King's Arms pub in Manchester. From the start the trio felt a great rapport and they became the House Band for that gig. Their rationale is to produce original music deriving from a wide variety of influences and styles, and to delve deeper than usual into the Standard songbook to present innovative interpretations of not-so-familiar numbers.

Biographies:

In 1995 George King was one of the winners of the Daily Telegraph young jazz musicians of the year, and from an early age has performed regularly as a classical soloist/recitalist and jazz pianist. He entered the Royal College in 1999 with a scholarship and graduated in 2003. In that time he took part in many concerts, and made his recording debut CD with Joanna Macgregor in a composition by Nitin Sawhney. A disc of a live improvised recital he gave in London last year is due to be released this year on the Warehouse label. George now lives and works in Manchester where he continues to teach and perform.

Jonas Backman has played drums since he was 9 years old but started more seriously at the age of 19. He has performed with several pop/rock bands as well as gospel choirs and a number of freelance gigs in England and Finland with artists as Lena-Maria Klingwall (swe), Ulf Christiansson (swe) and CC de Plique (fin). His main jazz influences are Elvin Jones and Bill Stewart and his favourite jazz album is Wayne Shorter's Speak No Evil. He says that his main musical influence is Aretha Franklin; he would like to be able to play drums the same way she sings!

Gavin Barras graduated B.Mus from Manchester University in 2002 where he received instrument tuition in classical double bass from Tom Goodman (LSO) and jazz bass from Steve Berry (Loose Tubes, Django Bates). Since then he has performed and recorded with a number of local and national jazz players including guitarist Stuart McCallum, trumpet player Neil Yates, and saxophonist Soweto Kinch. In the summer 2003 he performed at the Bridgewater Hall (Manchester Jazz), Wigan International Jazz Festival (supporting Paquito D'Rivera) and the Edinburgh International Festival.