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Award-winning pianist Richard Fairhurst is a powerful keyboard virtuoso capable of both meditation and funkiness, but he is as sophisticated a composer as he is a player. He is one of the UK’s most inventive pianists, according to The Guardian.
Steinway artist and BBC Jazz Award winner, Richard Fairhurst, is one of the UK’s leading jazz pianists and composers. 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.
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 three highly acclaimed duet albums with Berlin-based trumpet player Tom Arthurs: Mesmer, Postcards From Pushkin, and One Year. 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 Scott’s for Jazz on 3's program 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 performed in a two-piano setting with the late, great John Taylor at the Steinway 2 Pianos Festival/PizzaExpress Jazz Club several times, as well as John Taylor’s 70th birthday concert, broadcast live on Radio 3’s Jazz Line-Up program. They released their album Duets on Basho Records in 2015.
