Jamie Cullum

Born in East London in 1979, raised in Wiltshire, Jamie Cullum became an unlikely star with his inventive piano playing and scat singing style which introduced an old form of jazz to a new, young audience. Graduating from Reading University with first class honors in English literature and Film Studies and a deep love of jazz standards, Cullum self-produced his first album - Heard It All Before – with his trio, pressing just 500 copies at a cost of £480 in 1999. It proved surprisingly popular, arousing unexpected interest from TV and other media and after another album, Pointless Nostalgic, he signed a £1 million contract with Universal Records - who won a bidding war with Sony for his services. This resulted, in 2003, in his Twentysomething album, which included vivacious versions of standards like “Old Devil Moon” and “I Get A Kick Out of You” alongside his own songs, and it became the best-selling studio jazz album ever by a UK artist. Always open-minded about music, Cullum supplemented his jazz updates by experimenting with pop and rock and even soul and hip hop on collaborations with Pharrell Williams on the albums Catching Tales (2005) and The Pursuit (2009). In 2010 he married British model Sophie Dahl. His next album, Momentum, was released in 2013. He followed that up a year later with Interlude. In 2019, he issued the album Taller. During the 2020 holiday season, Cullum issued the album The Pianoman at Christmas.