George Fogel

George Fogel was born in London and through exposure to jazz at an early age, when 16 his quartet won the music for youth competition at the QEH and went on to play at the RAH with a prize for composition. He attended Junior Guildhall School of Music from 14 under the wing of Martin Hathaway and went on to get a scholarship to study there for a B(mus) in 2001. He took a year from the course to study in Berklee College of music under Lazlo Gardony and then returned to GSMD where he graduated in 2006 with a first class honours degree.

Throughout this period an omnivorous musical diet led him to work in both traditional jazz environments (regular appearances at venues such as The Vortex, Pizza Express, Ronnie Scotts and 606 to name a few) with members of London’s F-IRE and Loop collectives, and rock/dance clubs Cargo, the Spitz, 333 with Matt Calvert (now Three Trapped Tigers) , as well as the Duke Ellington Festival (US), and Brecon Jazz Festival.In these settings he has worked alongside such well known names as George Garzone, Phil Robson, Soweto Kinch, and Sebastien Rochford.

He has since been working with MOBO Award winning ensemble ‘Empirical’, and has his own quartet ‘Dice Factory’ alongside Tom Challenger as well as a five keyboard ensemble with Tom Rogerson (Three Trapped Tigers) and Mercury Nominee Kit Downs.

He is also active as an educator, giving workshops at GSMD and RAC, he is currently artist in residance with Empirical at Trinity College of music through 2011.

A subsidiary interest in writing music for animation and film lead him to recently embark in an MA in Sound Art practice at LCC.

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