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BMus(Hons),
double bass E-mail jonny@jazzberries.co.uk
D.O.B. Oct.1972 Professional
Experience:
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Education: Sept 1995 – July
1997 Trinity
College of Music, London (Archer Post-Graduate Scholarship) ● Post-graduate Bass Studies (modern & baroque)
with Chi-chi Nwanoku, O.B.E. ●
Post-graduate
Jazz Studies with Simon Woolf &
Alec Dankworth Sept
1991 – July 1994 Royal Holloway, University of London
(Choral Scholarship) & Copenhagen University / Danish Royal Conservatory (ERASMUS
scholarship) ●
B.Mus.degree
(performance course) ● Double bass teacher: Mette Hanskov
(principal bass, Danish Royal Opera)
Sept
1985 - July 1990 Marlborough College, Wiltshire (Music
Scholarship) ●
Double
bass teacher: Pete Moore (Bournemouth
Sinfonietta/West End shows) ●
A-levels
in Maths, Physics & Music; A/O-level French; GCSE German. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Biography: Jonny
Gee
is one of the UK’s most energetic and versatile freelance double bassists –
he loves the fantastic variety of music
available for his instrument, playing everything from modern
tango, classical & baroque music to jazz, gypsy swing and salsa. He has appeared on
many CDs, film & TV soundtracks and broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 &
4. His fingers were
featured on Channel 4 fumbling over the fingerboard of his favourite double
bass (plus a He
is resident bassist for The Chamber
Music Company in London, with whom he performed the premier of Stephen
McNeff’s new “not-the-Trout” piano quintet (with members of the Carducci String Quartet) and in 2004
he collaborated with Ravi Shankar
on his major work of that year: Sanmelan.
In 1999 he was a founder member of ZUM, the acoustic quintet that created gypsy-tango fusion, with
whom he stayed until 2005 and he has also toured with Kosmos &
She’Koyokh. He has broadcast live on
German Radio with The Sixteen and has been principal bass
for English Touring Opera on
both modern & period instruments. Jonny
is an active session musician and well-respected on the latin & world
music scene: since
1998 he has broadcast & toured internationally with modern tango quintet La Mariposa Tango from Buenos Aires; he is bassist
for conguero Robin Jones’ King Salsa and also appears
regularly with Columbian timbalero Roberto
Pla’s Latin Ensemble. He has performed
with Luiz D’Almeida’s Brazilian band Corda
Bamba, appeared at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival with the Antonio Forcione Quintet and went on
to tour with Decca-signed pop-fusion fiddler Sophie Solomon. In
the jazz field Jonny is MD for jazz vocalist Ruthie Culver – described by Time Out as “London’s rising
star on the jazz scene” – and for The
Jazzberries. He has also toured
with Time Zone and performed with many of the UK’s top jazz artists,
including Jacqui Dankworth, Gwilym
Simcock, Roger Beaujolais, Zoë Rahman, Pete King, Mark
Nightingale, Anthony Kerr &
Anita Wardell. He is featured on the award-winning new CD
by Dutch Romany Gypsy swing guitarist Lollo
Meier, tours with 50’s-swing specialists The Hep Chaps and leads his own innovative acoustic jazz quartet
Ping Machine. Occasionally
setting his basses to one side, Jonny Gee was Artistic Director for London’s
first Latin American Roadshow
in 2003 at Battersea Arts Centre (for The Chamber Music Company) and in 2006
created the new Salsa Music Course for
Dartington International Summer School. Jonny practises Tai Chi and is also a keen
freediver, currently in training for an underwater performance of John Cage’s
avant-garde masterpiece 4’33” transcribed
for submerged double bass – on a single lungful of air! _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Press Quotes: “Bassist Jonny
Gee sparred deftly around the soloists”
BBC (on
Gypsy Tango Pasión at Leicester’s Phoenix Arts Centre)
they made some wonderful music. Brilliancies came and went so fast that there was hardly time to applaud until the end.” Jack Massarik, Evening Standard (on Lollo Meier concert) “[In] Summerhayes' comic theatrical Mosquito Splat, bassist Jonny Gee is amusingly distracted by a nuisance insect before it meets its death on his instrument ...rendered with unbuttoned passion and brilliance.” The Strad on ZUM at The Purcell Room, South Bank Centre “I was very impressed with your high level
of preparation and total commitment. Your playing was both sensitive
and robust and you got exactly right the mixture of slightly disturbing and
completely exuberant. ” Stephen
McNeff - Composer (letter following 2006
London Premier of his Piano Quintet) “[This] sensuous tribute to the great tango
master Astor Piazzolla…was rooted in the deep theatricality of the best
tango traditions with expert bass player Jonny Gee driving it along superbly”
Western
Daily Press on La Mariposa Tango’s show Apiazolada
“The five performers seemed to
bring out not only their own personalities, but the personalities of their instruments, such as Jonny Gee the bassist following an
imaginary mosquito around the stage.” BBC on ZUM’s Salisbury Festival Performance |
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