DEREK NASH - 

A vibrant and charismatic performer on all 4 sax's from Soprano to Baritone, Derek Nash is equally at home leading the award winning Jazz ensemble Sax Appeal to Funky Heights, or swinging his way to best CD of the year 2000 with Spike Robinson. As a full member of the Jools Holland Rhythm and Blues Orchestra, he has performed in front of 65,000 people at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff & also to over 100,000 at the Glastonbury Festival. He has appeared live & on TV with with many top performers including Eric Clapton, David Sanborn, Tom Jones, Paul Carrack, Jamie Cullum, Mavis Staples, Will Young, Ruby Turner and Sam Brown.

Newton's recording career had begun in 1985 with Buddy De Franco and Martin Taylor and his first solo album was released in '88 in association with producer Elliot Meadow who oversaw the next nine years of recording for Linn Records followed by Candid Records. Once again, in 1997, David Newton and Alan Barnes teamed up and together with Concorde Label agent Barry Hatcher, made four CDs for that label. 

In the first five years of the nineties, Newton's reputation as an exquisite accompanist for a singer, spread rather rapidly and by '95 he was regularly working with Carol Kidd, Marion Montgomery, Tina May, Annie Ross, Claire Martin and of course Stacey Kent, with whom he spent the next ten years recording and travelling all over the world. While all this was going on, Newton was composing music which he would record on his own CDs as well as writing specifically for Martin Taylor, Alan Barnes, Tina May or Claire Martin and Newton's music can now be heard on many television productions, especially in the United States where over twenty TV movies benefit from Newton's haunting themes. In 2003, after a twenty year gap, David Newton was reunited with playwright Alan Aykbourn having been involved with eight world premiers in Scarborough and London back in the early eighties, and he was asked to write the music for two new productions, 'Sugar Daddies' and 'Drowning on Dry Land'. Currently, with the release of a new CD called "Inspired", on the 'Brightnewday' label, David Newton is relishing the musical freedom of his Trio and the special sound it makes whilst working on two other new recording projects, as an arranger and a composer.

David Newton has been voted best Jazz Pianist in the British Jazz awards six times and was made a Fellow of Leeds College of Music in 2003.

Pete was recently involved in live and studio work with Jools Holland’s Rhythm and Blues Orchestra, the BBC Radio Big Band, arranging for and directing the poll-winning 9:20 De-Luxe. 10-piece swing band and re-creating the music of Dizzy Gillespie in quintet and big band formats. In the course of playing with Jools, Pete has worked with a diversity of popular icons from Vinnie Jones to Lionel Richie and The Blind Boys Of Alabama to Sting. Working with Jools Holland has also enabled Pete to arrange music for Sir Paul McCartney, Chrissie Hinde, Jane Horrocks, Ray Davies and the unique talents of Marianne Faithfull! The famous oboe intro on "Handbags and Gladrags" by the Stereophonics is also Pete’s work, and a recent high was playing solo baritone saxophone in Dr John’s UK band.

STEVE MELLING- Keyboard

A hugely talented pianist  has toured the Far East with the Clark Tracey quintet, as well as playing on three of the groups albums.He also recorded with Alan Skidmore, worked and recorded with Claire Martin and with Peter King's quartet and quintet. He has played with American stars including Elvin Jones's Jazz Machine, Phil Woods, Benny Golson, James Moody, and Charles McPherson, and has performed two-piano duos with Stan Tracey.

 JEFF CLYNE - Double-bass

He was a member of the Stan Tracey quartet, which recorded the classic album Under Milk Wood. Towards the late 1960's, he worked with Gordon Beck (playing on his influential Experiments With Pops album alongside John McLaughlin and Tony Oxley in December 1967) and Tony Kinsey.

Towards the end of the decade, he took up bass guitar, joining Nucleus at its beginning in 1969 and staying until 1971. The group won first prize at the Newport Jazz Festival the same year, and at the Village Gate in New York. He also gigged with Keith Tippett's acclaimed sextet alongside Elton Dean, Mark Charig and Nick Evans. In November 1972 he was a founding member of Gary Boyle's Isotope, playing on the band's first album and gigging around England. He joined Gilgamesh in May 1975 in time for the recording sessions of the band's eponymous album. In 1976, with singer Pepi Lemer and former Isotope acolyte Brian Miller on keyboards, he formed Turning Point, a fusion band for which he composed much of the music and which recorded two acclaimed albums, Creatures Of The Night and Silent Promise.

He has accompanied singers Blossom Dearie, Marion Montgomery, Annie Ross and Norma Winstone, and worked with many US musicians, including Lucky Thompson, Zoot Sims, Phil Woods, Jim Hall, Lockjaw Davis, Taj Farlow, and with the Belgian, Toots Thielemans. He has been active in education of several years and is currently co-director of the Wavendon Summer Jazz Course, and also on the faculty of both the Guildhall School of Music and the Royal Academy of Music jazz courses.