I graduated from Bath Spa University in 1994 with a BA in Music. I also have an Art diploma (drawing and colouring in), a bronze swimming certificate, and I can drive a monorail.
These days with precious little time available for single track transportation, much of my focus is on music. I play in a couple of groups at the moment, my quartet: Piers Green / Kevin Glasgow / Chris Nickolls and The Paul Jordanous Ensemble , the members in it’s largest incarnation are: Tom White / Paul Booth / Piers Green / Kit Downes / Mark Rose / Chris Nickolls / Lewis Wright.
My first instrument is piano, though over the years during unsupervised exposure to a variety of keyboard instruments, I have become an advocate of the Electro-Mechanical Age. The EMA is something akin to the age of steam, but with wires, gears, and valves instead of coal, fire & water. When I was in my teens, I rescued (from the scrap heap) a Wurlitzer ep200 electric piano, more than likely discarded by it’s owner because around that time they had invented MIDI and some new keyboards called workstations. The Wurlitzer planted an electro-mechanical seed inside my tiny brain. Then along came a Lowry Organ which wasn’t quite hip enough, so I gave it to my friend Tim, who wasn’t quite hip enough either so they got along fine.
Much later on during a visit to the U.S. of A., I played a Hammond B3 Organ -and so a new quest began. A unique instrument and incredible engineering triumph, it is up there with some of the great inventions of our time, as well as earning it’s place in the music of yesterday, today, tomorrow and a week-next-Tuesday. I have estimated that with another 20 years hard labour, I may get a tiny bit closer to playing the thing properly – It’s a beast! I also aspire to taking one apart some day with a Swiss army pen-knife; take photos, clean stuff, and put it back together again. Probably a foolish whim, but If I ever take it on these pages will become littered with pictures of the inner workings. For this reason alone I don’t expect my blog stats to reach double figures in a year. Still, I’m not here for the glory, but just to share my enthusiasm for some marvellous machines and the noises they make, and the noises I make with them. Thanks for the interest, and drop me a line if you want to talk Hammonds- or anything else for that matter- as I don’t get out much.
