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Guitarist, Composer, Bandleader & Performer....
As a boy, Billy Jenkins (b.1956, Bromley,
Kent) sang in occasional choirs at St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey, toured
and recorded for legendary record label boss Clive Davis as a teenager
with art rock band Burlesque (1972-77), performed as a young adult with
'alternative musical comedy' duo Trimmer & Jenkins (1979-82) and drummer
Ginger Baker before founding (in 1981) the VOGC (the Voice of God Collective
- 'The voice of the people is the voice of God' [attrib. Plato and
others] - to which BJ adds, '...and the religion is music!' ).
Since then he has produced
a large body of nearly 40 recorded albums including 'Scratches of Spain',
'Motorway At Night', 'Entertainment USA' and 'Music For Two Cassette Machines'.
Some of his recordings are about his SE London environs and include 'Sounds
Like Bromley', 'Greenwich', 'Still Sounds Like Bromley' and 'Suburbia'.
From 1983 - 93 he lived and worked
at Wood Wharf Rehearsal Studios in Greenwich, where he welcomed an average
of 26.6 musicians through the doors every day.
Projects have included recording and
performing with The Fun Horns of Berlin, improvised musical boxing Big
Fights, Music For Low Strung Guitar, directing Anglo-Belgium and London
Meets Vienna ensembles, improvising to film, collaborating in words and
music with Ian McMillan, Ben Watson, Kate Pullinger a.o., composing and
performing with The Gogomagogs, compositions for six guitars, 'The Drum
Machine Plays The Battlemarch Of Consumerism'
for six drumkits, curating the Vortex World Cup Jazz Ball and sporadic
festival and club appearances on the continent and UK.
Member of the Arts Council
of England Improvised Touring panel from 1993 - 98.
In education he was Visiting Tutor
in Guitar Techniques at Lewisham F.E.College (1990-96), guest lecturer
at the Royal Academy of Music '95, Guest big band director at Middlesex
University '96. Ensemble Masterclasses at the International Summeracademy
Freie Kunstschule, Berlin '97. 'Moving On' music workshops with Andy Sheppard
a.o., Belfast '99. Musical Director and workshop leader for Greenwich Young
People's Jazz Orchestra, Blackheath 2000. School Workshops with the Pied
Piper Project, Yorkshire, March 2001. Visiting Artist on the Jazz Faculty
at Trinity College of Music (2001-2) and currently at the Royal Academy
of Music since 2002.
In 2002 he created and
presented over forty live two hour Sunday lunchtime radio shows in London
on Resonance 104.4FM, entitled 'One Way Single Parent Family Favourites'.
For 2006/07, ‘Billy Jenkins'
Songs Of Praise' was created especially for a short UK tour in his 50th
year, with instrumentation and personnel capable of merging the myriad
strands of Jenkins' musical and performing career into a fast flowing spontaneous
and joyous celebration of humanist music making. Songs of Praise, indeed!
Since 1995 he has prefered
performing live with his Blues Collective, solo, or duo with fellow guitarist
Steve Morrison in Here Is The Blues!
He is also a member of Tom
Bancroft's 'Kidsamonium'.
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Billy Jenkins Selected Press
Comments
''The wayward master of
the woebegone' Rob Adams Glasgow Herald
Only one in 20,000 English
bluesmen inhabits a recognisable reality. Step forward Billy Jenkins,
anarcho guitarmeister and arch-demythologiser. Pure genius'. Mike
Butler City Life
'American readers will be baffled
by him; but he is, along with the Princess Royal and Walthamstow dog stadium,
one of our national treasures.' Penguin
Guide To Jazz On CD
'His humour surely springs from
a deeply moralistic, even puritanical stance, and surely the adjectives
normally applied to Jenkins - such as 'zany' and 'quirky' - actually diminish
what in reality constitutes a serious and savagely satirical attack on
commercialism and consumerism.'
Trevor Hodgett Jazzwise
'Billy Jenkins has the priceless
ability to merge serious music-making with absolute lunacy, and make the
one feed off the creative energy of the other'. Kenny
Mathieson The Scotsman
'Next to Jenkins, chroniclers of
modern Britain such as Pulp seem like feckless dilettanti' Richard
Cook New Statesman
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