About

in short

Creating music without boundary. Jazz (my first love), soul, folk, rock, classic ... always human, aiming positive, expressing my soul's longing, my life's journey.

My vehicles : sax, clarinet, guitar, vocals, songwriting, production, arranging.

My idea of music is real people playing and communicating from our hearts. "Proudly Made By Humans".

Thanks to the cosmic creative intelligence that gives us all! (Or can use your own name, we have many languages!) Thank you to my global friends, to YOU for listening and enabling.

Music is love and healing and - do we ever need that!

longer version

I was born and raised in Wales, late last century. During my unstable childhood (always cared for, kind people, a kind place and time), music, especially that good, old jazz, spoke to me. My school kindly lent me a clarinet, and Mr Jofre Swales (a kind man and a true teacher), understood and nurtured as I tried to copy those sounds.

("Kind" also means "family" ... !)

I didn't go to a conservatory. (I learned to play with electron(ic)s ... another story!) I learned music playing in bands, the street, bars and clubs around London, private lessons here and there. I didn't want to dig deeper until I hit hard times. Music became my reliable friend. So it started and so it continues.

Everything takes time. Economics and confidence are involved. I try, succeed or fail, learn, keep going. Still doing it, and will do as long as I'm able.

heroes, heroines, influences (no particular order, very incomplete)

Louis, Ella, Nat Cole, Beethoven, Bach, Nick Harper, Lucky Thompson, Bird, Sonny, Marvyn, Holland/Dozier/Holland, Gershwin, Porter, Richard Rodgers, the Dubs, the Clancys, Martin Hayes, Bechet, Hodges, Duke, Mingus, Hawk, CLifford Brown, Mendelssohn, Tchaikowsky, Boubacar Traore, Manu Dibango, Paul Weller, Bacharach, Gamble and Huff, Curtis, The Specials, Madness, Quincy (thank you Q!), Mancini, Riddle, Billy May, The Band, The Meters ...

... all the unknown bards, griots, healers, bluesmen and women, whose names are forgotten but whose music is not ...

x daniel