JIM TOMLINSON

Candid recording(s):

Biography:

Jim Tomlinson, like many great players before him, is an illusionist, capable of conveying conflicting moods simultaneously and thereby bringing listeners to the entranced state where they neither know nor care what it is they are hearing. So writes Humphrey Lyttelton in the liner notes to Jim Tomlinson's debut CD, Only Trust Your Heart. Perhaps best known for his work as the compelling counter-voice to singer and wife, Stacey Kent, Jim is increasingly recognised as a distinctive saxophone voice in his own right. The release of his debut album as leader, Only Trust Your Heart (Candid CCD 79758), was greeted with enthusiastic and universal acclaim. Crescendo Magazine noted that so far as this collection is concerned, Tomlinson is the boss, his authority profound and deeply emotional, influencing his fine colleagues with a subtlety and an understated power which is palpable. Award-winning critic, Dave Gelly, writes that he had more or less given up hope that one day a young tenor player would come along to whom the terms "warmth", "restraint", "charm" and "song" were not entirely alien concepts. I certainly didn't expect to encounter one as good as Jim Tomlinson, whose playing combines them all to such devastating effect and the Sunday Tribune concludes that Jim has become the most important English saxophonist to emerge in a long time and even Courtney Pine and Andy Shepperd pale into insignificance by comparison. His gorgeous tone, stately elegance and his true melodic poise can be truly appreciated on the new Candid CD Only Trust Your Heart.

With notices like these, you might be forgiven for thinking that jazz had been Tomlinson's calling from birth. However, the reverse is true. His first forays into music were as a chorister at Hexham Abbey. Singing has remained at the core of Tomlinson's musical concept, and although he is exclusively an instrumentalist these days, no one who has heard him deliver a ballad can be in any doubt that it is the song that is being played. "When I am playing a ballad, the lyrics are with me at all times. I phrase the tune to the lyrics which are playing in my head." This perhaps explains the extraordinary empathy between Tomlinson and Kent that led Andrew Vine, writing in the Yorkshire Post, to remark that moment where Tomlinson's tenor haunts the vocal like a memory of better times, is simply magical.

So how did Tomlinson the treble become Tomlinson the tenor? "I took up clarinet at school but soon realised that I was far more likely to get a place in the county wind band as a saxophonist that as a clarinettist. Also, there was a certain young lady in that band who I was anxious to spend time with, if you get my drift. Well, the thing with the girl didn't last but my love affair with the saxophone is still going strong. Then, by sheer chance, I came across a Charlie Parker record at a friend's house. There was a saxophone on the cover so my curiosity was roused. I put the record on and all I can say is that from that moment, I wanted to part of the music." Tomlinson did not, however, study music formally until well into his twenties. Although he played saxophone as a hobby, he completed a degree in PPE at University College, Oxford. It was only then, having joined the Ritz's resident band, Vile Bodies, that he considered obtaining any sort of qualification in music.

"Here I was in London, with a PPE degree, working at the Office Of Fair Trading, and yet all I wanted to do was to work on my music. I found out about the course at the Guildhall, auditioned and to my surprise, was accepted." On that Guildhall course was Stacey Kent. Jim and Stacey were already acquaintances through mutual friends in Oxford, and they quickly formed a musical partnership based on an extraordinary similarity of taste. "It was uncanny. Our likes and dislikes were almost identical. We had the same records, loved the same songs and singers and were headed in the same direction. We even ended up, quite by chance, living two streets away from each other. You might call it destiny or fate but it was as if we had known each other all our lives." Also on the course was guitarist and musical associate, Colin Oxley. "Colin comes from Newcastle and I'm from Hexham though we didn't know each other before the course. Perhaps it's a northern thing, but we got along musically from the start. His playing on my record is out of this world. He has an instinctive understanding of what I am about." The future for Tomlinson looks bright. He is regularly to be seen alongside Stacey Kent, both in the UK and abroad. He can also be seen fronting his quartet around the jazz clubs of Britain and is a regular guest with Humphrey Lyttelton's band, with whom he has recently recorded. With plans to record a follow-up album in the Spring of 2000, Tomlinson's schedule is keeping him on the move. "I consider myself to be very lucky. If you had told me five years ago that by now, I would have played at both Blue Note and Birdland in New York, be performing with some of the greatest musicians in the world, and be receiving the kind of notices that I have had for my recorded and live work, I would have laughed. But this is really happening and so I now have a responsibility to be the best that I can be every time I play, which is a serious business."