Bob Sedergreen

Bob Sedergreen

Bob Sedergreen Melbourne, January 2007
Background information
Birth name Robert Sedergreen
Born 1943
British Palestine
Genres Jazz, Blues
Occupation(s) Musician
Teacher
Bandleader
Instruments Piano, Keyboards
Years active 1962 to Present
Associated acts Jimmy Witherspoon
Website Official Site

Bob Sedergreen is a renowned Australian jazz pianist. Sedergreen has had a long and distinguished career as a performer, bandleader and educator. He has collaborated with leading Australian artists, including John Sangster, Don Burrows, and Brian Brown, and supported some of the biggest names in jazz, including Nat Adderley, Dizzy Gillespie and Milt Jackson.

Biography

Sedergreen was born in British Palestine in 1943 to Seamus (James, Jim) Sedergreen, a British Warrant Officer First Class, and Leah Erlichman, a milliner.[1] In 1947, His Majesty's government sent the P&O steam ship Ortranto to evacuate all British families, as the British Mandate was coming to an end and Palestine would finally become Israel. Bob, together with his mother, and his sisters Joyce and Millie, settled in London and his father followed in 1948. Bob moved to Australia in November 1951, where he lived on Whitehorse Road and briefly attended Armadale State School before transferring to Haileybury College, a Presbyterian school for boys.

Bob played with the Fred Bradshaw Quartet (1962–70), Ted Vining Trio (1971–2007), Alan Lee's Plant (1973), Brian Brown's Quintet (1974) and Brian Brown's Quartet (1977–79). In the 1980s, he worked with the Australian Jazz Ensemble, Onaje and Peter Gaudion's Blues Express and the popular Blues on the Boil.

Bob has toured extensively both around Australia and overseas, including Montreal, Malaysia and Europe. He has been advisor to the Montsalvat International Jazz Festival and involved in the introduction of new talent as well as negotiating and supervising the Nat Adderley Quintet and the McCoy Tyner Trio.

As an educator, Bob has lectured at the Victorian College of the Arts and the University of Melbourne's Faculty of Music. He has also been an artist-in-residence at many Victorian secondary schools.

To play with Bob Sedergreen has been described as the "ultimate armchair ride".

Recent projects

Sedergreen began hourly sets in Melbourne, Australia, in 2007, where he has taken to narration while performing the music of his life, taking time for comments, while still playing in chronological order to entertain the public in a one man jazz show, called, "Hear Me Talking to Ya". Named after a Nat and Cannonball Adderley tune, and compared to "sitting on a bar stool, hearing a lifetime of jazz stories, Sedergreen's new show has been compared to 'sitting next to Bob on a bar stool hearing a lifetime of jazz stories'. Similar to a "virtual music book", reviewers continue to take his audience through the progression of his life as a pianist, using wit and his fifty years of experience as a jazz performer to entertain.[2]

Awards

Discography & bibliography

Sedergreen has recorded twenty solo albums, produced three cassettes, and shared many anecdotes in his autobiography Hear Me Talking to Ya.[1][4][5] His recordings include:

  1. For Elvin (Live) - Ted Vining Trio
  2. Unanimity - Tony Gould and Bob Sedergeen

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Sedergreen, Bob (2007). Hear Me Talking To Ya: Tales from a Fair Dimkum Jazzman. Melbourne Books.
  2. ↑ Australian Stage Online; "Hear Me Talking to Ya"
  3. ↑ 'Sedergreen Wins Don Banks Award', Jazz Australia
  4. ↑ Kaye, Lorien (2007-05-18). "Hear Me Talking to Ya book review". Age. Fairfax. Retrieved 2010-11-14.
  5. ↑ "Hear Me Talking to Ya by Bob Sedergreen" (pdf) (Press release). Australia: Melbourne Books. 2007. Retrieved 2010-11-14.

External links