The student-led Improvised Music Project presents "An Afternoon with Michael Gibbs," a masterclass on jazz, harmony, composing, and arranging. Jazz composer/arranger Michael Gibbs collaborates with his former student and renowned jazz guitarist Bill Frisell at the UW on Thursday, January 14th, 2016 with the UW Symphony and Jazz Studies Faculty, and again on Friday, January 15th, 2016 with the UW Big Band and Jazz Studies Faculty.
ARTIST BIO
Michael Gibbs, composer/arranger
Mike Gibbs - composer, arranger and trombonist has worked with many music luminaries, including Pat Metheny, John McLaughlin, John Scofield, Narada Michael Walden, Michael Mantler, Gary Burton, Whitney Houston, Peter Gabriel, Bill Frisell.
Born in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe), he grew up playing trombone and piano and was awarded scholarships to attend Lenox School of Jazz and Tanglewood Summer School, where he studied with Gunther Schuller, George Russell, J.J.Johnson, Lukas Foss, and Iannis Xenakis. Having graduated from Berklee College of Music with diploma in Arranging and Composition in 1962, he moved to the U.K. played trombone for Tubby Hayes, Graham Collier, John Dankworth and Cleo Laine, and by the 1970's was generally recognised as one of the leading young composer-arrangers in jazz.
His albums, including Michael Gibbs and In The Public Interest, won him numerous awards and after nine years as composer-in-residence at Berklee, during which time he orchestrated Joni Mitchell's Don Juan's Reckless Daughteralbum among many others.
He returned to the U.K. in 1985. He has since written extensively for films and television and worked with the NDR, WDR and HR bands in Germany. In 2004 he received an Honorary Fellowship from Birmingham Conservatoire.