Chris Garrick
@ the PizzaExpress Jazz Club
26 January 2010

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Biography

Chris Garick studied at London's Royal Academy of Music between 1989 and 1994 gaining first-class honours in his Performers’ Degree also winning the DipRAM in his post-graduate year. His tutors and mentors included the unsung hero of British jazz violinists, John Van Derrick. Among the resident and visiting staff were Hugh Fraser, Martin Speake, Nick Ingam, Steve Coleman, Jack Dejohnette, Huw Warren, Chucho Valdez, Arturo Sandoval, Gary Peacock and Kenny Wheeler. He attained his teaching diploma (LRAM) and was later made an Associate of the Royal Academy.

Garrick has worked with many different artists including Julian Joseph, Bireli Lagrene, Dolly Parton, All About Eve, Simon Mulligan, Luka Bloom, Van Morrison, Brian Ferry & Marina Laslo. He has made tours of the Far East and Australia with guitarist John Etheridge in a tribute to Stephane Grappelli and in 2001 he toured Israel with Dame Cleo Laine and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. His performance at the Genius of the Violin Festival in 2004 led to invitations to perform Piazzolla’s Seasons with Barry Wordsworth in Brighton and then in London, at the Royal Festival Hall. He tours regularly with Parisian guitar virtuoso Angelo Debarre, Alec Dankworth’s ‘Spanish Accents’ and his own ‘Homage to Grappelli’. He is active in the world of commercial session music and his violin can be heard on many film soundtracks including amongst others, The Imaginarium of Dr Parnasus, Brideshead Revisited, Chocolat, Moulin Rouge, Chicago, The Edge of Love, Borat, An Ideal Husband, Tomorrow Never Dies and Big Fish.

Garick has recorded six solo albums of which Different Strokes was called “The outstanding British album of the year” in the Sunday Times. He has won the Benjamin Doniger Jazz Scolarship, Lansdowne Studios Award, Modena Prize, and the Cleo Johnson Composition Award, and in1992 won admission to the International Association of the Schools of Jazz headed by Dave Liebman in Siena, Italy. His Quartet, with David Gordon on piano, Tom Hooper on drums and Jeremy Brown on double bass, were winners of the Special Award for Best Ensemble at 1999’s BT Jazz Oscars. Chris has since been nominated for ‘Best Rising Star’ and for ‘Best Miscellaneous Instrument’.

In 1987 he formed the group Nobody's Quartet with Jon Noyce, bass (ex-Jethro Tull), James Pearson (house pianist at Ronnie Scott’s), and Allan Simpson, guitar. In 1989 they were joint winners of the Daily Telegraph Young Jazz Competition. He played drums in a high school rock Band covering David Bowie, Lou reed and Saxon!