Annie Whitehead
Encyclopedia
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...
trombone player.
Career
Annie learned trombone at school; at 14 she was already busy playing with brass bands, local dance groups and the Manchester Youth Jazz Orchestra and began her professional career at sixteen. Among her initial influences were Miles DavisMiles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
, Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...
, and Wayne Henderson
Wayne Henderson (musician)
Wayne Henderson is a soul-jazz and hard bop trombonist and record producer. In 1961, he co-founded the soul jazz/hard bop group The Jazz Crusaders...
. She is also eclectic and willing to try other genres besides jazz.
In the 1970s she moved to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
where she found herself in demand. In the following years she worked with Chris McGregor
Chris McGregor
Christopher McGregor , was a South African jazz pianist, bandleader and composer born in Somerset West, South Africa.- Early influences :...
's 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....
, National Health
National Health
National Health were a progressive rock band associated with the Canterbury scene. Founded in 1975, the band included members of keyboardist Dave Stewart's band Hatfield and the North and Alan Gowen's band Gilgamesh, the band also included guitarists Phil Miller and Phil Lee and bassist Mont...
, Carla Bley
Carla Bley
Carla Bley, née Borg, is an American jazz composer, pianist, organist and band leader. An important figure in the Free Jazz movement of the 1960s, she is perhaps best known for her jazz opera Escalator Over The Hill , as well as a book of compositions that have been performed by many other...
, Robert Wyatt
Robert Wyatt
Robert Wyatt is an English musician, and founding member of the influential Canterbury scene band Soft Machine, with a long and distinguished solo career...
, Joan Armatrading
Joan Armatrading
Joan Anita Barbara Armatrading, MBE is a British singer, songwriter and guitarist. Armatrading is a three-time Grammy Award-nominee and has been nominated twice for BRIT Awards as Best Female Artist...
, Penguin Cafe Orchestra
Penguin Cafe Orchestra
The Penguin Cafe Orchestra was a collective of performing musicians created by classically trained British guitarist, composer and arranger Simon Jeffes...
, Chris Rea
Chris Rea
Chris Rea is an English singer-songwriter, recognisable for his distinctive, husky voice and slide guitar playing. The British Hit Singles & Albums stated that Rea was "one of the most popular UK singer-songwriters of the late 1980s. He was already a major European star by the time he finally...
, Bill Wyman
Bill Wyman
Bill Wyman is an English musician best known as the bass guitarist for the English rock and roll band the Rolling Stones from 1962 until 1992. Since 1997, he has recorded and toured with his own band, Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings...
, Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello , born Declan Patrick MacManus, is an English singer-songwriter. He came to prominence as an early participant in London's pub rock scene in the mid-1970s and later became associated with the punk/New Wave genre. Steeped in word play, the vocabulary of Costello's lyrics is broader...
, Jah Wobble
Jah Wobble
Jah Wobble is an English bass guitarist, singer, poet and composer. He became known to a wider audience as the original bass player in Public Image Ltd in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but left the band after two albums...
, ...And the Native Hipsters
...And the Native Hipsters
...And the Native Hipsters was an English post-punk group formed in London in 1979. Centred around the nucleus of musicians William Wilding and Blatt , they are best known for their 1980 single, "There Goes Concorde Again", which attracted the attention of BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, and reached...
, and others. In 1984 she formed her own band and released her first CD as its leader. She was a member of Working Week
Working Week (band)
Working Week were a British jazz-dance musical ensemble, active in the 1980s and 1990s.Working Week were formed in 1983 by guitarist Simon Booth and saxophonist Larry Stabbins, who were previously in post punk outfit Weekend...
, has contributed to far more than 50 albums and has recorded five albums under her own name.
She had been part of the Jazz Jamaican Allstars alongside saxophone player Denys Baptiste and her own band blends reggae rhythms with jazz. In 2003 she played trombone on Robert Wyatt
Robert Wyatt
Robert Wyatt is an English musician, and founding member of the influential Canterbury scene band Soft Machine, with a long and distinguished solo career...
's award-winning album Cuckooland
Cuckooland
-Track listing:All tracks composed by Robert Wyatt; except where indicated#"Just a Bit" – 5:09#"Old Europe" – 4:15#"Tom Hay's Fox" – 3:33#"Forest" – 7:55#"Beware" – 5:09...
. Lately, she has participated in the Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
tribute band Zappatistas with jazz guitarist John Etheridge
John Etheridge
John Michael Glyn Etheridge is a British jazz/fusion guitarist associated with the Canterbury Scene....
and others. In 2004 BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
called her "one of the country's great trombonists." In 2006, she joined Belgian band The Wrong Object
The Wrong Object
The Wrong Object is an avant-garde jazz fusion band from Belgium. Its current line-up is Michel Delville on guitar, guitar-synth, voice and compositions, Bart Maris on trumpet, Joe Higham on saxophone and clarinet, Antoine Guenet on keyboards, Pierre Mottet on bass and electronics, and Laurent...
for a series of gigs later documented on the Voiceprint CD, "Platform One". In 2007, she played trombone on most of the tracks contained in Robert Wyatt
Robert Wyatt
Robert Wyatt is an English musician, and founding member of the influential Canterbury scene band Soft Machine, with a long and distinguished solo career...
's album Comicopera
Comicopera
Comicopera is an album by Robert Wyatt released on 8 October 2007, available on both CD and double vinyl formats . It is Wyatt's first release on the Domino Records label...
.
Whitehead also has worked with her girlfriend, Jennifer Maidman and teaches jazz at London's Centre for Young Musicians
Centre for Young Musicians
London's Centre for Young Musicians, or CYM, is a Saturday music centre for children up to 18 who play an instrument, currently run by Stephen Dagg...
.
Discography
- Mix up 1984
- This is ...Rude 1994
- Naked 1997
- Home 2000
- The Gathering 2000