Like other British jazz musicians at the time, he was absorbing influences from the full range of the music spectrum, including the popular kind. In 1970 Michael Gibbs recorded and released his first, self-titled album. After that, the BBC heard my music, I formed a band in 1968, and things never stopped.” Michael Gibbs in the recording studio We became friends and I started writing for John. While playing with a rehearsal band, I met saxophonist and bandleader John Dankworth who needed a trombonist to back his wife, singer Cleo Laine. That introduced me to the local jazz musicians. “I had met Graham Collier at Berklee and within my first week in London, I started working in his band with trumpeter Kenny Wheeler and drummer John Marshall. He came to London in 1965 and immersed himself in the city’s thriving jazz scene. During that time he attended the Lenox School of Music in Massachusetts, a legendary summer program that was previously attended by the likes of Ornette Coleman, Paul Bley, Steve Kuhn and many others. Michael Gibbs was born in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and studied in the US at Berklee College of Music (a 1963 graduate). Indeed Gary Burton was a major proponent of Michael Gibbs’ music and featured it on his albums throughout his rich recording career. That might sound a very sweeping statement to make about a London-based Rhodesian but Gary Burton, Stan Getz and many others will attest to its truth.” The liner notes on that album say: “This is Mike Gibbs’ first album, and it gives considerable insight into the music of one of the most interesting composers in the whole of jazz. We start with a debut album by a fantastic Rhodesian-born composer who settled in England in 1965. 1970 was a stellar year for jazz in Britain and in this article I will review some of my favorite British jazz albums from that year. Jazz was on a parallel path in Britain, and many of the genre’s musicians found themselves guesting on pop and rock albums and recording on the same progressive labels. Pop and Rock music became more sophisticated and ambitious, musicians honed their performance skills and wrote long-form pieces of music, major record labels established subsidiaries to focus on progressive music, and best of all – the audience was ripe to accept and appreciate the new music. The late 1960s and early 1970s were an exciting period in British music.
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