Saxophone Summit featuring:
Peter king, Mornington Lockett, Julian Siegal & Gábor Bolla
@ the 606 Club
17 November 2008

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Peter King biography

Born 11 of August in Kingston upon Thames, during an air raid, Peter King had a few lessons on piano and violin during his school years. However it was not until he took up the clarinet at 15 that he decided to make music his life. Only three months after getting his first clarinet, King was offered a job with the local semi-pro Dixieland band and got an early grounding in the history of jazz, from King Oliver to Charlie Parker, who inspired him to change to alto-sax.

When he was only eighteen King played the opening of London's famous Ronnie Scott's Club and, for a while was the resident Quartet at the club. He was also voted “New Star” 1959 in the Melody Maker Jazz Poll and has been a major influence on the British Jazz Scene ever since.

At only 21 years of age Peter King was invited by the great and legendary genius Bud Powell to play with him at the Blue Note in Paris. Even today this is one of his most memorable experiences both musically and socially. As well as working with many Big Bands including Maynard Ferguson, Tubby Hayes, StanTracey, Jonny Dankworth, plus the great Ray Charles and the Brazilian legend Hermeto Pascoal, King has accompanied many great show business stars. During his long career he has worked with such people as James Brown, Tony Bennet, Marlene Dietrich, Liberace, Lauren Bacall and countless others.

During the mid-sixties, King had his quartet at Annie Ross’ club – Annie’s Room. He played regularly with great singers such as Anita O’Day, Ernestine Anderson and Joe Williams. During this time King gained an intimate knowledge of the Blues and the real meaning of Soul which has never left him.After leaving Annie's Room, King went on the road with Dakota Staton and Jon Hendricks, both of whom had settled in the UK for a while. On one memorable day he played on the steps of Saint Paul's Cathedral in front of thousands of people at the memorial concert for Martin Luther King. Sharing the honor were Jon Hendricks, Dakota Staton and Philly Joe Jones.

With the arrival of the eighties King started to build his career anew with the first of several albums under his own name. He also started to tour extensively on the Continent, especially in France where he acquired a lot of new fans. Over the years King has played on many “Pop” sessions but the most long lived collaborations have been with Ben Watt of “Everything But The Girl” and with Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones. King is a member of Charlie’s Quintet and apart from playing in Japan, Brazil and the USA - including a sell-out week at the Blue Note in New York - he has acted as musical director, composer, and arranger on all of the quintet’s albums including Charlie’s “Tribute To Charlie Parker” and the Billboard Chart topping “Warm And Tender”. This coupled with his work with Charlie and composer Michael Kamen on the film “Blue Ice” starring Michael Caine, has added to his growing reputation as a writer.

King continues to keep abreast of new developments among the younger generation of British musicians and really thrives on the challenge of working with such phenomenal talents as Julian Josef and Mark Mondesir.

Mornington Lockett biography

Tenor saxophonist Mornington Lockett studied at Dartington College Of Arts before moving to London to attend the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.As a member of the Ronnie Scott Sextet, Lockett worked extensively in Britain and abroad. He has recorded albums with Ronnie Scott, guitarist Jim Mullen, drummer Martin Drew, pianist Stan Tracey, and jazz singers Sarah Jane Morris, Claire Martin, Ian Shaw, and Lea Delaria. In 1995 Lockett performed at the Barbican with Cuban trumpet supremo Arturo Sandoval and was subsequently asked to appear with the group at the Cork Jazz Festival. Lockett has also toured internationally with Oscar Peterson's long time sidemen, drummer Martin Drew and bassist Niels Henning Ørsted Pedersen, and toured Europe in the summer of 2004 with the legendary hammond organist Jimmy Smith. In 2001 Lockett and Martin Drew formed the group: Celebrating The Jazz Couriers, which recreated Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott’s late 1950s group. The other featured saxophonist in the band was the great Nigel Hitchcock, with Steve Melling (piano), and Andrew Cleyndert (bass) completing the line-up. Two CDs of this music are available now, Volume 1 and 2, both recorded at live gigs in the UK.

In 2004 the ‘Celebrating’ group disbanded, and reformed as The New Jazz Couriers with the phenomenal young vibes player Jim Hart replacing the second sax, and Paul Morgan joining the band on bass. The focus of the music has shifted slightly, taking in the Tubby Hayes Quartet repertoire and also the compositions of great British pianist and vibraphone player, Victor Feldman. There is a new album “Azule Serapé”.

In 2006 Lockett joined up with British saxophone legends Don Weller and Art Themen to form a popular group called the Three Jazz Tenors, which is currently on tour in the UK.

In 2008 Lockett joined up with Sting/Wayne Shorter pianist Jason Rebello, Black Crowes guitarist Paul Stacey, international drumming star/producer Jeremy Stacey and bass icon Pino Palladino to form a unique band called Actual Spoof. The group is affectionately revisiting some classic 70s and 80s jazz-fusion and rock music, as well as playing some distinctive new material.

Gábor Bolla biography

Gábor Bolla was born in 1988 in Budapest. He has played the clarinet since the age of 10. In 2000 he won first prize in the National Schools’ Clarinet Competition. Around that time he also got his first taste of jazz and within a year he had begun to play the soprano and tenor saxophones. In 2003 he got to the semi-finals in the World Saxophone Competition at the Montreux Jazz Festival. He has played at festivals in Bilbao, Bucharest, Delhi and Bombay. At the end of 2004 Bolla won the Hans Koller Prize in Vienna, he also received an invitation from the Vienna Art Orchestra to play on their upcoming CD. The Gábor Bolla Quartet (with Gábor Cseke on piano, Zoltán Oláh on bass, and András Mohay on drums) was formed on the saxophonist’s 15th birthday. The debut record of the band includes tunes of Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and Miles Davis, plus compositions of the two Gábors. The latter match perfectly the pieces written by the great masters. Despite their young age (the oldest member, Cseke, is 33), all members of the band are already major figures of the Hungarian Jazz scene.