Much Ado about Jazz
Chris Gumbley and Al Gurr

BIOGRAPHIES

CHRIS GUMBLEY
After graduating from Huddersfield School of Music, where he studied clarinet, piano and composition, Chris taught at Stoke-on-Trent College before being offered posts teaching saxophone at Birmingham Conservatoire and composition at Birmingham University. An eclectic musical outlook and adaptability in his playing has led to high profile work in the past with The Temptations and Four Tops (U.K. Tours ’03 and ’05), Saxtet, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, English Chamber Orchestra, Pasadena Roof Orchestra and the Berkley Salon Ensemble, as well as theatre work and innumerable jazz gigs. Chris has a particular interest in jazz education, with colleges and schools in UK and abroad often calling on his services in this field. Recent jazz courses at Radley College, Gordonstoun School and a music school in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic have helped keep him busy. In 1987 he founded Gumbles Jazz Club in Stafford, his home town, which ran for over 20 years, and even hosted his own BBC radio show, Jazzbeat, for a short while. Classical recitals have included performances of both the Mozart and Brahms Clarinet Quintets with members of the CBSO. Chris’s work as an ABRSM examiner has taken him all over the world - most recently to South Africa, Singapore, Turkey, Portugal and USA. He adjudicated at the 2019 Perth Piano Competition and the 2020 Young Musician of the Caribbean in Santo Domingo. Current playing projects include Tribute to Cannonball - a quintet which reproduces the sound of the great Cannonball Adderley Quintet of the 1950s and 60s - and a new show, Much Ado about Jazz, which features Chris and celebrated pianist Al Gurr in a tongue-incheek look at the jazz world. As well as several adjudicating assignments, more recent highlights have included being guest saxophone soloist in Richard Blackford’s Pieta at Leicester Grammar School and working with the students on a composition project at Birmingham Conservatoire and Trinity Music College in London.

AL GURR
Al has been a session musician since graduating from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire back in 1991. He has toured with artists such as Alfie Boe and Hayley Westenra and played for countless other artists such as Jonathan Ansell, Faryl Smith, Blake, Leslie Garret, Josie Lawrence, John Nettles, Jenny Agutter and many more. All of this work includes TV and radio sessions along with orchestral concerts, rock gigs and jazz gigs. In the jazz field he has played with many of the leading names in Britain including Simon Spillet, Alan Barnes, Mark Nightingale, Julian Stringle, Sara Colman, Bruce Adams, Art Themen (to mention a few) and currently plays regularly in the Tom Hill’s 70’s Jazz Funk Machine and Bryan Corbett Quartet. Algorithm Studios is where Al has produced several albums and carried out production work for different artists particularly those who perform in the cruise ship market such as Jacqui Scott, Craig Owen, Ralph Allin, Gary Arbuthnot and Penny Mathiesen. Al also creates arrangements for artists, and teaches at Birmingham conservatoire and Rugby school.