Paula Gardiner

Album cover of Paula Gardiner's debut album Tales of Inclination

Paula Gardiner (* around 1963) is a British jazz musician ( double bass , also guitar , flute ) and composer .

Live and act

Gardiner comes from a family of musicians in Wales ; her father worked as a drummer in a dance band. As a child she learned to play the guitar. At the age of 13 she attended the music camps of John Dankworth and Cleo Laine . At the age of 17 she began studying classical guitar at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama ; two years later she directed the theatrical music for a performance at the National Youth Theater of Wales . Since 1981 she has been writing music for short films and the theater and working for the television channel S4C, which broadcast its programs in Welsh. It was not until she was 27 that she learned the double bass, which she played in an Afro-Cuban band for seven years. She was also part of Crissie Lee's big band . She was involved in the recording of Weekend in Wales (1993) by Alison Statton & Spike.

Gardiner released three albums under his own name after her debut Tales of Inclination (1995) so far (2018), most recently in 2008 Hot Lament , recorded in trio with saxophonist Lee Goodall and drummer Mark O'Connor . She was also a member of the Dave Stapleton Quintet, to be heard on the albums When Life Was In Black And White (2005), The House Always Wins (2007), Catching Sunlight (2008) and Between the Lines (2009).

Gardiner has been teaching jazz at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama since 2001 . In the meantime she headed its jazz department and is a member of the Jazz Committee of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers & Authors . She is also Honorary Chairman of Women in Jazz in Swansea. In 2012 she received a nomination for the Parliamentary Jazz Award for Education .

Web links

• Portrait in Bass Guitar Magazine
• interview
• Paula Gardiner at Discogs (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ John Chilton Who's Who of British Jazz , p. 216