Nottingham International Jazz Piano Competition 2012

 Tim’s first encounter with a piano was at the age of 8 in a dentist’s waiting room. After classical piano lessons he taught himself jazz and blues from the age of 14, after seeing Thelonious Monk on TV. His style has been described as “Luminously funky, laced with the blues” (The Rough Guide to Jazz) and “A unique mixture formed from his admiration of both the expansive, robust playing of McCoy Tyner and the luminous delicacy of Abdullah Ibrahim” (The Times).

Tim’s modern jazz quartet SPIRIT LEVEL was formed in Bristol in 1979, and toured throughout the 1980s and 90s performing at jazz clubs and festivals in almost every European country, appearing in double bills opposite such names as McCoy Tyner, Horace Silver and Joe Henderson, and being nominated 'Best Small Group' in the 1995 British Jazz Awards.

In 1999 Tim expanded the group to a nine-piece, renaming it GREAT SPIRIT, recording two CDs – most recently the acclaimed ‘Epistrophy’ (33jazz120). The band toured the UK several times, taking in appearances at the Brecon, Cork, Manchester, London and Scarborough jazz festivals (amongst others) and featuring a cross-section of Britain’s most talented musicians including Peter King, Jason Yarde, Denys Baptiste, Gilad Atzmon, Ed Jones, Seb Rochford, and founder members Dick Pearce, Roger Beaujolais and Tony Kofi.

GREAT SPIRIT’s first UK tour saw the premiere of Tim’s large scale composition Suite for The Shed, a 60-minute piece in seven sections, commissioned in 1999 by Yorkshire venue The Shed, and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 the same year. Tim's work also includes pieces for non-jazz ensembles, with commissions for Tryptich Piano Trio (1998), Consortium5 Recorder Consort (2007) and the Interference Trio (2009). His most recent jazz commission is the 25-minute Shamanism Suite for the Gloucester Youth Jazz Orchestra, which he conducted at the 2009 Cheltenham International Jazz Festival. He is currently working on a toy piano piece for pianist Kate Ryder.

Tim has released over a dozen albums under his own name, including two with Austrian saxman Sigi Finkel, and three CDs by the Tim Richards TRIO. The trio have entertained audiences from Istanbul to Inverness with their combination of contemporary originals, swinging bebop and bluesy grooves, and will be touring the UK in February/March 2011 to promote their new CD ‘Shapeshifting’ (33jazz205).

He has also toured and recorded with many well-known blues artists, including the award-winning Otis Grand, Dana Gillespie and Earl Green, US guitarists Larry Garner and Joe Louis Walker, Chicago vocalist Deitra Farr, and Muddy Waters’ harmonica player Mojo Buford.

Apart from his playing activities, Tim is one of Britain’s best-known jazz educators, a jazz examiner and contributor to the ABRSM jazz piano syllabus, and author of the acclaimed tutors IMPROVISING BLUES PIANO (1997) and EXPLORING JAZZ PIANO Vols 1 & 2 (2005), published by Schott Music – the latter won the prestigious MIA Award for ‘Best Pop Publication’ in 2006. His latest book EXPLORING LATIN PIANO, a collaboration with pianist John Crawford, is due out in November 2010. Tim currently teaches jazz piano at Morley and Goldsmiths Colleges in London.

www.timrichards.ndo.co.uk
www.myspace.com/timrichards