Tim Hopkins

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Tim Hopkins, (born in Auckland, New Zealand) is an Australian jazz musician.

This biographical article or section is written like a résumé.
Please help improve it by revising it to be neutral and encyclopedic. (May 2008)

Growing up in Brisbane, Australia, Tim was heading for a career in graphic arts when he picked up the saxophone on a whim at age 15. Something clicked and just a few years later he graduated from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and was coming to the attention of Australian jazz icons Vince Jones, Paul Grabowsky, Mike Nock, James Morrison, Don Burrows, top kiwi musicians Kim Patterson, Kevin Field, Frank Gibson Jnr, Nathan Haines, Mark de Clive Lowe, Andy Browne, Roger Fox, King Kapisi and Gray Bartlett. Other credits include You Am I, Kate Ceberano, Ed Kuepper, Doug Williams, Midnight Oil, Jackie Orzsasky, and many others, not to mention a brief jam with Sting.

Tim has also developed his skills as a composer and band leader, his debut in 1993 Good Heavens coincided with winning the inaugural National Jazz Saxophone Award at the Wangarratta Jazz Festival in Australia. By the end of the 1990s he had recorded another four CDs, toured South East Asia, Canada and Europe and performed at Jazz Festivals from Montreal to Melbourne, Waiheke to Wellington.

In 1999, on an Australia Arts Council grant, he packed up his horn and headed to jazz mecca New York City where he studied with saxophonist George Garzone. Whilst there, he played with Jim Black and Seamus Blake and wrote/arranged/performed with an adventurous ensemble called Phydia featuring a string quartet with a standard jazz quartet line up. It was from the creative intensity of NYC that ideas for a new album began to grow.

In 2000, Hopkins moved back to New Zealand and began recording and compiling his 6th solo CD Hear Now After. The first single Loophole features TV presenter Russell Harrison on vocals, rapper King Kapisi, percussionist Miguel Fuentes and Hopkins on an assortment of instruments. Loophole was included on a NZ On Air compilation disc and features a black and white video directed by the NZ Independent Film Company.

Always searching for new and exciting ways to present his music and ideas, Hopkins is helping to set new standards in the developing DJ/Live Music movement. He was instrumental in starting the Heineken Green Room Sessions across New Zealand with DJ Clarke and The Gordon Bennett Project. GBP have also played at the Heineken Open, headlined in Malaysia and Singapore at several big events and released a double CD recorded at Millton Vineyards & Winery in Gisborne.

Hear Now After, which was released in March 2008, features many of the musicians listed above and other top players from New Zealand and Australia, including appearances by drumming legend—and father—Tony Hopkins, Mike Nock, Max Stowers, Dixon Nacey, Aaron Coddel, Jonathon Zwartz and Sean Wayland.

Tim recently returned to Sydney where he is performing/producing music, and designing websites.