Cannonball Aderley, PeeWee Ellis, Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker, Coltrane, Kenny Garret, Roy Hargrove, Criss Potter, Rosario Giuliani, Mingus, Hank Crawford, Eddie Harris, Soony Rollins, Andy Sheppard, Dean Frasier and many More
Biography
James Morton was born in Bristol in 1982. James has English, Russian and Polish heratidge and started learning saxophone age 9. He played his first gig at age 12 and grew up performing in groups in the South of England playing with established musicians on the scene. James often performed in venues where he was too young to enter and sometimes had to pretend to be a relative of a club owner or manager.
James left school at age 16 to persue his career in music and at age 21 won a place on a Masters degree course at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama where he completed his masters degree in jazz one year later.
James has developed his unique voice through direct influences from funk, soul, jazz, gospel, latin and urban music. He has the abilty to communicate to an audience through his saxophone and directly project deep emotion across to the listener in a lyrical style.
James has two key mentors in the form of Andy Shepperd and Pee Wee Ellis which he continually works with in a variety of projects.
Performances
At age 16 James performed on the Jazz/World stage at Glastonbury festival and has continued to appear on large festival stages across Europe and as far as Texas U.S.A. James first played with Pee Wee Ellis age 17 and continues to draw inspiration and advice from Pee Wee. James is now a core member of Pee Wee Ellis' Still Black Still Proud an African tribute to James Brown which has toured main stages at festivals all over Europe and has involved guest artists including: Fred Wesley, Cheik Lo, Martha High, Angelique Kidjo and Tony Allen to names a few.
Andy Sheppard is also a mentor to James. This relationship has developed over the last few years after Andy saw James playing with his jazz qurtet in a club in Bristol. This quartet developed into James Morton and Lunatics and featured Andy in a number of gigs across the U.k. Andy also composed a suite of music "The Hotel Suite" for the group which knocked out crowds across the country. James is now an integral soloist in Andy Sheppards Sax Massive who opened the London Jazz Festival in 2007 and have also performed at Coutance Jazz festival.
James appears on Pendulum's platinum selling Drum 'n' Bass album SLAM and has also performed with Fred Wesley, Winton Marsailes, Billy Cobham, Jason Rubello, Abrham Wilson, Beth Rowley, Snowboy and Tomorrow's Warriors to name a few.
James was nominated for Serious music's Take five award in 2007
and The PRS promoters choice award in 2008
James's Latest creation Porkchop Ft. James Morton is comprised the impressive personel of Dan "Pinstipe" Moore (Hammond organ), Ian Mathews (drums) and Deny Illet (guitar). Influenced by funk, soul-jazz, soul and gospel. The concept behind "Porkchop" is to eliminate the introspective and self indulgent elements that some "jazz" music can often adhere to with the intent to bring the music back to the people. Some very exciting guests are currently being lined up for performances in 2009/2010!
The debut album recorded in 2009 is entitled "Don't You Worry 'Bout That'"
brilliant gig here last night with gary & co huge thanks again but you might have to stop playing "God Bless the Child" it gets me every time and I'm running out of tissues!
hey james...greetings from the tour bubble! hope you managed to sort out some gigs, i've got a question mark whether i can do the 24th so hope you can take the reigns of i'm not around. buzz you later this week
Hi! :) Just wanted to say that i love your music! I picked up a CD of various bands in Bristol and you were on it :) Fantastic! I play Jazz flute, and have just started teaching. Have you got any reccomendations of any venues in Bristol that are good for Jazz? Also, I don't know any Jazz musicians myself, and would LOVE to play/front a jazz band. Do you have any advice on how I could go about getting a group of musicians together, or finding some to jam with? I have a few videos on my page of a couple of pieces..They are rough recordings but, please take a look :) Thank you! Keep playing! :)
