Geoff Eales

Geoff Eales (born 13 March 1951) is a Welsh jazz pianist, improviser and composer.

Musical education

Born in Aberbargoed in the south Wales valleys, Eales began his musical education at the age of eight, in the late 1950s. His father Horace, pianist in a well-known local dance band, taught him to play the 12-bar blues. He was also introduced to piano masters Erroll Garner, George Shearing and Oscar Peterson, as well as Bud Powell, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.

Eales also underwent a more conventional musical education while a pupil at Lewis School, Pengam, learning classical piano and the French horn. He played the latter with the Glamorgan Youth Orchestra and, in 1968, with the National Youth Orchestra of Wales. He achieved a B.Mus (first-class honours) and a master's degree at Cardiff University and in 1980 was awarded a Ph.D for his large scale orchestral work "An American Symphony" and a setting of Dylan Thomas' poem "In the Beginning" for tenor, horn and piano. He also wrote a thesis entitled "Structure in the Symphonic Works of Aaron Copland".

Career

Eales has worked with singers and musicians from pop, rock, jazz, country, opera, and musical theater. He has played on soundtracks, TV shows, and jingles. He has been a featured soloist with symphony orchestras and has composed a symphony, a piano concerto, A Sussex Rhapsody, commissioned by the BBC Concert Orchestra, and chamber works.

Early in his career he cruised the world on a Greek liner. During this period he spent a great amount of time in New Orleans, where he played with Buddy Tate, Jimmy McPartland, Earl Warren, and Major Holley. He then moved to London, where he joined Joe Loss's band. The following year he became the pianist in the BBC Big Band, where he remained for over four years.

For the next fifteen years Eales worked with Henry Mancini, Lalo Schifrin, Jerry Goldsmith, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Rosemary Clooney, Adelaide Hall, Tammy Wynette, Shirley Bassey, Andy Williams, Kiri Te Kanawa, and José Carreras.

At the end of the 1990s, he returned to jazz and performed at the Blue Note Clubs in Osaka and Fukuoka, New York's Birdland, the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles, Louisville's Jazz Factory and London's Ronnie Scott's, and at many major jazz festivals, including Zagreb, Belgrade, Cork, Brecon, and Edinburgh.

Discography

• Mountains of Fire (Black Box, 1999)
• Red Letter Days (Black Box, 2001)
• Facing the Muse (Mainstem, 2002)
• Synergy (Basho, 2004)
• The Homecoming (33 Jazz, 2006)
• Jazz Piano Legends (2007)
• Epicentre (33, 2007)
• Master of the Game (Edition, 2009)
• Shifting Sands (33 Jazz, 2011)
• The Dancing Flute (Nimbus Alliance, 2013)
• Free Flow (33Xtreme, 2013)
• Invocation (Nimbus Alliance, 2014)
• Transience (Fuzzy Moon, 2016)

External links

• Geoff Eales biography from BBC Wales
• http://www.riverfrontjazz.co.uk/Performers/geoff_eales.htm
• The Geoff Eales, Jazz Piano Legends.
• Review of Geoff Eales, Jazz Piano Legends.