Pete Churchill

Pete Churchill (* 1961 in London ) is a British jazz musician ( piano , vocals , conducting , composition , arrangement ).

Live and act

After finishing school, Churchill studied music at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada . He completed his postgraduate studies in composition and arrangement at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he has held a professorship for jazz since 1988.

Churchill composed for musical theater. At the Vivien Ellis Prize for New Musicals in 1988 he won the special prize for the gospel musical David and Goliath and in 1992 he was awarded the Cecil Jackson Fights Back show . The songs on the two pieces sold well in Denmark, where they went gold and platinum. In 1993 he was musical director of Five Guys Named Moe in London's West End for a year. As a composer, he wrote several oratorios such as David and Goliath (for five hundred children, soloists and big band; performed at the Royal Albert Hall in 2003 ) and Babel (for narrator, five hundred children and nonet, 2006). Churchill, together with Stan Tracey , the Sacred Music of Duke Ellington staged. In 2004 he directed the Glasgow Jazz Festival Chorus . As a choir director and teacher, he has traveled around the world - including Australia and China.

Churchill accompanied Geoff Gascoyne on the joint album Winter Wonderland in 1997 . He also supported Mark Murphy as a pianist in the UK for more than a decade . He also runs a trio under his own name that released a critically acclaimed album called The Bad and the Beautiful (2004) starring saxophonist Bobby Wellins . As a singer, Churchill was a member of the Kenny Wheeler Vocal Project with Norma Winstone , with whom he performed at the Berlin Jazz Festival and the Summer Jazz Festival in central Finland. This led to the development of the London Vocal Project , which he directs and with which he appeared with Bobby McFerrin and recorded Wheeler's cycle Mirrors (2013). With the vocal ensemble he staged the Miles Ahead Project , an adaptation of Gil Evans' instrumental album Miles Ahead for voices in collaboration with Jon Hendricks , which premiered in New York in 2017 and then had several performances in England. He also conducted the Kenny Wheeler Big Band at concerts and during the recording of The Long Waiting (2012). Some of his works have been published in the Small Band Jazz series by Stainer & Bell Publishers .

After almost twenty years teaching at the Guildhall School of Music , he is now Professor of Jazz Composition at the Royal Academy of Music and directs the jazz choir at Trinity College of Music .

Web links

• Web presence
• Entry (Royal Academy of Music)
• Pete Churchill at Discogs (English)
• Pete Churchill at Allmusic (English)