Tom Bancroft
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Tom Bancroft (Born in London in 1967), Tom Bancroft is a jazz drummer and composer. He began drumming aged 7 and started off playing jazz with his father and identical twin brother Phil. After studying medicine at Cambridge University he spent a year studying composition and arranging at McGill University in Montreal. Qualifying as a doctor in 1992 he then worked as a jazz musician and composer, supporting his music income with locum work as a hospital doctor until 1998, when he began starting music related companies. He is married to singer Gina Rae and has two children - Sam and Sophie. In 2004 he received the prestigious Creative Scotland Award.
In 1998 he launched Caber Music with support from the National Lottery fund, which went on to release over 30 CDs over the next 7 years to great critical acclaim including 2 BBC Jazz awards for Best CD, and numerous album of the year placings. He has subsequently started the company ABC Creative Music with his twin brother Phil Bancroft, which develops creative music education resources which are now being used in more than 500 schools in Scotland.
As a drummer he has studied with Jo Morello, Joey Baron and Andrew Cyrille and played with many great musicians including Sun Ra, Joakim Milder, Charlie Mariano, Hamiett Bluiett, Liane Carroll, Oliver Lake, George Colligan, David Berkman, Tommy Smith, Julian Argüelles, Emil Vicklicky, Martin Taylor, Sheila Jordan, Shooglenifty, Karen Mathieson, Reid Anderson, Billy Jenkins, Bill Wells, Geri Allen, Mr McFall’s Chamber, and Martyn Bennett.
He is currently the drummer with the Dave Milligan Trio, the Chick Lyall Trio, and Kevin MacKenzie’s Vital Signs, the Laura MacDonald Quartet & Octet and plays in a crazy improvising duo with Italian guitarist Enzo Rocco.
He is drummer and co-leader of Trio AAB, whose first album ‘Cold Fusion’ Caber 004 was named an album of 1999 by BBC Radio 3, and whose second album ‘Wherever I Lay My Home That’s My Hat’ Caber 021 was an album of 2001 in The Guardian, and picked in a list of 100 essential all time jazz albums by MOJO magazine in 2001.
As a band leader and composer he has led Orchestro Interrupto (formerly the Tom Bancroft Orchestra) (contemporary jazz big band) producing a CD ’Pieology’ Caber 001 in 1998, many festival performances, a UK tour, and a live concert broadcast on BBC Radio 3. In 2004 the band toured the Uk with US piano star Geri Allen ( one of Bancroft’s musical hero-ines) and the tour was broadcast on Radio 3, received 5 star reviews in The Guardian and The Scotsman and was voted jazz gig of the year in Manchester’s City Limits and London’s Time Out magazines. He has also composed for and led the Orange Ear Ensemble (octet), and Kilt Couture (collaboration with French group ARFI).
In 2006 he launched the new Tom Bancroft 6 Pack as well as a spin off kids focussed band from the Orchestra called Kidsamonium , featuring trombone playing mystic chickens, which premiered at the Gateshead International Jazz Festival at The Sage Gateshead and also at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival in 2006.
Bancroft’s compositions have been used in radio, film, dance, TV and theatre. He has been commissioned by BBC Scotland, BBC Radio 3, Glasgow International Jazz Festival, Assembly Direct, Birmingham Jazz, and the National Youth Jazz Orchestra of Scotland. He has ‘danced’ in, played and composed music for ‘Life on the Planet's Surface’ with Kelsey Michael,and ' A Case for a Picnic Pt2, ' Tracing Houdini' , and ‘hoOps hAtS & AcrObAts’with choreographer Ruby Worth.
