Steinway artist and BBC Jazz Award winner Richard Fairhurst is one of the UK’s leading jazz pianists. He released his first album to critical acclaim when just 19 and has worked with many of the top names in jazz today.
Richard released three albums as leader of the band ‘The Hungry Ants’ which also featured renowned saxophonist Iain Ballamy. He received a scholarship to study jazz and improvised music at the New School University in Manhattan, New York. He has been a Steinway International Artist since 1998 and at the age of 20 he reached the final of the Montreux Jazz Festival’s Solo Piano Competition.
Since this early success he has gone on to perform all over the UK and at Jazz Festivals worldwide including Jerusalem, Copenhagen, Cologne, Vienna, Cheltenham Jazz festival, Bath festival and Senegal where he supported Joe Zawinul.
Richard was commissioned to write music for a new sextet at the Cheltenham International Jazz Festival This music was released on his fourth album as leader ‘Standing Tall’ which won the prodigious BBC Jazz Award for Best New Work.
He has released two highly acclaimed duet albums with Berlin based Trumpet player Tom Arthurs, ‘Mesmer’ and ‘Postcards From Pushkin’. The duo went from strength to strength with a BBC commission for the City of London Festival and a performance at the BBC Proms in 2009. They also performed at Ronnie Scotts for Jazz on 3‘s programme celebrating the best of Jazz in Britain.
His first piano trio recording ‘Triptych’ featuring Danish bass player Jasper Hoiby and New York drummer Chris Vatalaro was released in 2010.
Richard worked in a two piano setting with the late great John Taylor. They performed at the ‘Steinway 2 Pianos Festival’ at the PizzaExpress Jazz Club several times and John invited Richard to perform with him at his 70th birthday concert which was broadcast live on Radio 3’s Jazz Line-Up programme. They released their album ‘Duets’ on Basho records in 2015.
