Alan Skidmore is a tenor saxophonist

Tenor saxophone

The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor, with the alto, are the two most common types of saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B, and written as a transposing instrument in the treble...

 of jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 and blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

 music, son of the saxophonist Jimmy Skidmore

Jimmy Skidmore

James Richard 'Jimmy' Skidmore was an English jazz tenor saxophonist born in London and father to tenor and soprano saxophonist Alan Skidmore, perhaps best-known for his work with George Shearing from 1950-1952...

.

As a sideman

Skidmore began his professional career at 16 and early in his career toured with comedian Tony Hancock

Tony Hancock

Anthony John "Tony" Hancock was an English actor and comedian.-Early life and career:Hancock was born in Southam Road, Hall Green, Birmingham, England, but from the age of three was brought up in Bournemouth, where his father, John Hancock, who ran the Railway Hotel in...

. In the mid to late 1960s he worked with John Mayall

John Mayall

John Mayall, OBE is an English blues singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, whose musical career spans over fifty years...

's Bluesbreakers and Ronnie Scott

Ronnie Scott

Ronnie Scott was an English jazz tenor saxophonist and jazz club owner.-Life and career:Ronnie Scott was born in Aldgate, east London, into a family of Russian Jewish descent on his father's side, and Portuguese antecedents on his mother's. Scott began playing in small jazz clubs at the age of...

's group. In the 1970s, he was part of Keith Tippett

Keith Tippett

Keith Tippett is a British jazz pianist and composer.Tippett, the son of a local police officer, went to Greenway Boys Secondary Modern school in Southmead, Bristol. He formed his first jazz band called The KT7 whilst still at school and they performed numbers popular at the time by The Temperance...

's jazz fusion

Jazz fusion

Jazz fusion is a musical fusion genre that developed from mixing funk and R&B rhythms and the amplification and electronic effects of rock, complex time signatures derived from non-Western music and extended, typically instrumental compositions with a jazz approach to lengthy group improvisations,...

 bigband project Centipede

Centipede (band)

Centipede were an English jazz/progressive rock/Canterbury sound big band with more than 50 members, organized and led by the British free jazz pianist Keith Tippett...

 and worked - among others - with Soft Machine

Fourth (Soft Machine album)

Fourth is a 1971 studio album by the Canterbury band Soft Machine. The album is also titled Four or 4 in the USA; the numeral "4" is the title as shown on the cover in all countries, but a written-out title appears on the spine and label...

, The Nice

Five Bridges

The Five Bridges Suite is a modern piece of music, written in the 1960s, combining classical music and jazz. Written about the UK city of Newcastle upon Tyne, it was released as an album by The Nice which achieved the number two position in the UK album charts...

, Graham Collier

Graham Collier

James Graham Collier OBE was an English jazz bassist, bandleader and composer.-Life and career:Born in Tynemouth, Northumberland, on leaving school Collier joined the British Army as a musician, spending three years in Hong Kong...

, Brotherhood of Breath

Brotherhood of Breath

The Brotherhood of Breath was a big-band created in the late 1960s by South African pianist/composer Chris McGregor , essentially an extension of McGregor's previous band The Blue Notes....

, Mike Gibbs

Michael Gibbs (jazz composer)

Michael Clement Irving Gibbs is a jazz composer, conductor, arranger and producer as well as a trombonist and keyboardist....

, Elton Dean

Elton Dean

Elton Dean was an English jazz musician who performed on alto saxophone, saxello and occasionally keyboard....

, Kate Bush

Kate Bush

Kate Bush is an English singer-songwriter, musician and record producer. Her eclectic musical style and idiosyncratic vocal style have made her one of the United Kingdom's most successful solo female performers of the past 30 years.In 1978, at the age of 19, Bush topped the UK Singles Chart...

 and Curved Air

Curved Air

Curved Air are a pioneering British progressive rock group formed in 1970 by musicians from mixed artistic backgrounds, including classic, folk, and electronic sound. The resulting sound of the band was a mixture of progressive rock, folk rock, and fusion with classical elements...

. He has since played with many other musicians in blues and jazz, including Chick Corea

Chick Corea

Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, and composer.Many of his compositions are considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis' band in the 1960s, he participated in the birth of the electric jazz fusion movement. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever...

, Alexis Korner

Alexis Korner

Alexis Korner was a blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as "a Founding Father of British Blues"...

, Georgie Fame

Georgie Fame

Georgie Fame is a British rhythm and blues and jazz singer and keyboard player. The one-time rock and roll tour musician, who had a string of 1960s hits, is still a popular performer, often working with contemporaries such as Van Morrison and Bill Wyman.-Early life:Fame took piano lessons from the...

, and the Van Morrison

Van Morrison

Van Morrison, OBE is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician. His live performances at their best are regarded as transcendental and inspired; while some of his recordings, such as the studio albums Astral Weeks and Moondance, and the live album It's Too Late to Stop Now, are widely...

 band.

As an artist in his own right

His first album under his own name was 1969's Once Upon A Time and on this and his other albums a strong John Coltrane

John Coltrane

John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...

 influence can be heard, especially on his 1988 album Tribute to 'trane, and 1998's After the Rain, orchestral settings of tunes that had been recorded (and some of them written) by Coltrane. In 1973 he co-founded the all-saxophone ensemble S.O.S. with John Surman

John Surman

John Douglas Surman is an English jazz saxophone, bass clarinet and synthesizer player, and composer of free jazz and modal jazz, often using themes from folk music as a basis...

 and Mike Osborne

Mike Osborne

Michael Evans Osborne was an English jazz alto saxophonist, pianist and clarinetist, perhaps most noteworthy for his contributions as a member to the Chris McGregor band Brotherhood of Breath in the 1960s and 1970s.He was born in Hereford and attended Wycliffe College in Gloucestershire and the...

. At the end of the Apartheid regime he went to South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

 to record with musician

Musician

A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....

s from the percussion group Amampondo

Amampondo

Amampondo is a South African percussion ensemble which was started by Dizu Plaatjies in Langa Cape Town in 1978. The other founding members were Simpiwe Matole; Michael Ludonga; Mzwandile Qotoyi; Leo Mbizela and Mandla Lande.-Origins:...

, including pianist Simpiwe Matole, playing modern jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 over a texture of African percussion and chants.

Discography

• Once Upon A Time (1969) Deram Records
  Deram Records
  Deram Records was a subsidiary record label established in 1966 by Decca Records in the United Kingdom. At this time U.K. Decca was a completely different company than the Decca label in the United States, which was then owned by MCA Inc. Deram recordings were also distributed in the U.S. through...
  
  
• TCB (1970)
• SOS (1975)
• Tribute To Trane (1988)
• From East To West (1992)
• After the Rain (1998) - playing ballad
  Ballad
  A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...
  
  s with Colin Towns
  Colin Towns
  Colin Towns is an English composer, born 13 May 1948 in London, specialising in soundtracks for film, television and commercials. Learning piano as a child, by the age of 13 he was earning money playing at weddings and birthdays in his neighbourhood of the East End of London...
  
  ' Mask Orchestra.
• The Call (2001) - with Amampondo
• Ubizo (2003) - with Amampondo

External links

• Skidmore's website