A Few Words of Introduction
One supposes introductions are in order. My name is Dylan — half-English, half-French, and wholly devoted to the syncopated arts. I make my home in Bristol, where I spend my days (and a good many evenings) coaxing ragtime, stride, and hot jazz from the pianoforte. At eighteen years of age, I confess I've already spent rather a long time at the keyboard; I passed my ABRSM Grade Eight at fifteen and am presently wrestling with the LRSM diploma. The examiners, I trust, shall find me adequately prepared.
My musical education has been, for the most part, a solo expedition. I taught myself to navigate the ivories, guided chiefly by the gramophone and an insatiable curiosity. Scott Joplin was my first obsession — those marvellous rags had me utterly spellbound as a child. Before long, I'd committed them to memory and begun hunting for fresh quarry.
Musical Lineage
The hunt led me, in my early adolescence, to the incomparable Jelly Roll Morton. Here was a fellow who understood that a piano ought to swing. His style lodged itself firmly in my consciousness, and it was through his influence that I took up stride piano in earnest. Jazz, I discovered, was where my heart truly lay — and there it has remained ever since.
In time, I stumbled upon the novelty school: Zez Confrey's fiendishly clever compositions, and thence to the British masters of the twenties and thirties — Billy Mayerl and Carroll Gibbons. More recently, the modernistic solo works of Bix Beiderbecke and Fred Elizalde have captured my imagination. One does so enjoy expanding the repertoire.
"Jazz isn't what you play, but how you play it." — Jelly Roll Morton
Present Engagements
Beyond solitary practice, I perform regularly at Bristol's 1904 Club — where I am, I'm told, possibly the youngest ever to earn the Blue Feather. Each week, I take my place at the interval piano with Henry's Hot Six, led by the estimable Henry Davis of Henry's Boot Blacks, a band that has graced Bristol and world jazz festivals for some sixty years. Rather distinguished company for a young chap, I must say.
When not at the piano, one finds me composing and arranging syncopated pieces for solo and ensemble alike, or else attempting to master the bass saxophone and sundry other brass and woodwind contraptions. Sight-reading remains a particular enthusiasm — I can tackle Fats Waller at first glance without too much disgrace. The musical journey, I fancy, is far from complete.