Steinway artist and BBC Jazz Award winner Richard Fairhurst is one of the UK’s leading jazz pianists. He released his first album to critical acclaim when just 19 and has worked with many of the top names in jazz today. Richard released three albums as leader of the band ‘The Hungry Ants’ which also featured world-renowned saxophonist Iain Ballamy. He won the Pat Smythe award for young musicians of outstanding talent and won a scholarship to study jazz and improvised music at the New School University in Manhattan, New York. He has been a Steinway International Artist since 1998, had a week’s residency at Ronnie Scott’s with Iain Ballamy at the age of 20 and in 2000 reached the final of the Montreux Jazz Festival’s Solo Piano Competition.

Since this early success he has gone on to perform all over the UK and at Jazz Festivals worldwide including Jerusalem, Copenhagen, Cologne, Vienna, Cheltenham Jazz festival, Bath festival and Senegal where he supported Joe Zawinul. He has made numerous appearances on BBC radio programmes such as Jazz On 3, In Tune, Jazz Line-Up and Loose Ends and was selected as one of two artists representing the future of British jazz for a BBC documentary on jazz in the UK. ‘The Times’ newspaper also featured him in their arts column ‘Great British Hopes’.

Line Up: Richard Fairhurst – piano, Dave Whitford  – bass & Tim Giles – drums