Stephen Harding
Grade 8 Piano, BA (hons) Music with German (University of Southampton)
I was educated at Southampton University where I studied Music and German. I quickly developed an interest in jazz and taught myself jazz piano whilst continuing with my classical music studies. My university dissertation was on Bill Evans. I retain a passion for both genres and have studied classical piano at an advanced level with David Hamilton in London since 1994. During this time I have performed solo piano works by Bach, Chopin, Debussy, Godowsky, Mozart, Ravel and Schubert as well as accompanying a variety of singers and other instrumentalists. I formed my own jazz trio whilst still at University and have played alongside some of Britain’s finest jazz musicians including leading saxophonists Alan Skidmore and Lee Goodall. In the late 1980s I was the regular house pianist at Ziggy’s, the London Jam Session, where musicians of the calibre of Jean Toussaint and Don Rendell regularly appeared. I have performed as a solo pianist in London’s Café Royal and have an encyclopaedic knowledge of both the jazz and classical piano repertoire.
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