Saturday, November 19, 2011

Tina May Perfection from a Little Blond Brit


I love female vocalists, especially jazz singers - Keeley Smith, Peggy Lee, Amanda Crumley, Blossom Dearie, Terry Sullivan, Nancy Wilson and the fabulous Ella Fitzgerald
Tina May is young British jazz vocalist -Dig this Blond!








Tina started exploring and developing her jazz sensibilities at University College, Cardiff. She attended vocal studies with Eilleen Price in the music dept. and almost immediately teamed up with other musicians to form small bands.She joined the Welsh Jazz Soc. run by Jed Williams and was soon a regular listening to Sweets Edison, Eddie'Lockjaw' Davies, Al Cohn and many, many more at The Lions Den' in the Great Western Hotel in Cardiff. As a student of French ,Tina knew she would have the opportunity of living in France for a year as part of her degree course. She chose to study in Paris and began her apprenticeship in Jazz when ,by chance, she met up with some aspiring young music students, who invited her to 'faire un boeuf' - have a jam with them.These musicians were Pascal Gaubert and Patrick Villanueva - who recorded with Tina on the 'live in Paris' album nearly twenty years later! Very soon Tina was performing at Le Slow Club with the Roger Guerin Big Band with special guest Kenny Clarke - such a great drummer and sweet man. Le Caveau de la Huchette became another regular gig for Tina and the band. Tina formed a quartet with Patrick Villanueva, Renaud Garcia-Fons, Alain Richard and they performed allover Paris . At that time Tina was also involved in theatre and especially comedy review- something she felt a great affinity with. She met up with another talented thespian Rory Bremner who was already writing sketches and performing his hilarious monologues and skits on politics. Together Tina and Rory performed 'You are Eiffel but I like You (!)' - a review show which they took from Paris to the Edinburgh Fringe re-naming it 'Midnight Excess'. Tina was singing some amusing jazz songs like 'I'm hip' and doing some bi-lingual and 'franglais' originals as well as acting alongside Rory. Happy times !

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