Martin Jones

Martin Jones was born in Hull in 1955. He gained his experience with playing trumpet first in school bands, and then Hull school bands with many concerts with orchestra’s, concert bands and a Jazz Swing Band. He left those to form his own bands and started working with his own band commercially in the jazz field in the late seventies. By 1982 Martin was working professionally on the club circuit and the theatre circuit in cabaret. By now he was utilising his skills on the trumpet and vocals and honing his performance skills. After a successful audition, Martin started a residency at two clubs in the Latin Quarter in Paris. When returning to the UK some 6 months later, Martin was head-hunted and put in as trumpet player/front-man and vocalist at a West End tourist venue called the City of London Tavern. He stayed there for a year, worked in a club in Oxford Street and then went back to Paris for 2 months. Eventually Martin returned to play with international cabaret group ‘The English Eccentric Ragtime Four’. With this group he had a residency in London’s Mayfair and recorded, broadcasted and toured. At the same tame he was a session trumpet player and vocalist in the London area. He also spent some time working for New York Network Television while he was with this band. In 1987 he left the band to tour Europe, he then worked doing broadcasts on several TV shows including The Bobby Davro Show and the Val Doonican Show amongst others. He then eventually left London and returned to his roots back in Hull. He soon got work with a regional band called The Casablanca Boys which was a function band playing all types of gigs and music. He left this band four years later to form 6 of his own bands and worked as far as the Hilton Hotel in Abu Dhabi. He also was teaching trumpet and vocal tuition at The Keech School of Music. In 2000 he joined the tutor body of East Riding College’s music department in partnership with Access to Music. Martin has become an acknowledged expert in relaxed vocal and trumpet techniques. He now plays nationally and internationally within the Jazz field and is an acknowledged expert within this field having played in many Jazz festivals and having performed with the likes of Kenny Wheeler and Andy Shepherd. He successfully developed a new Jazz Course at Access to Music in partnership with East Riding College as well as Jazz Summer Schools in partnership with the Hull International Jazz Festival back in 2010-2012, and since then he has diversified into wiriting as well as performing, recording and teaching.

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