The Jazz Organ Scene

Great Britain

George Cooper From as early as four years old when he began playing drums, George immersed himself in every school band and orchestra until at the age of eighteen after graduating with triple distinction for a BTEC National Diploma in Popular Music at Exeter College, was offered the piano chair with The Pete Allen Jazz Band. He then began touring extensively across the UK and Europe with the band, appearing on the same bill as some of the most celebrated names of traditional British Jazz including Kenny Ball, Acker Bilk and Chris Barber.   In 2009, George was invited out to Remote Control Productions in Santa Monica, CA/USA to work for Hans Zimmer and was assigned a job in the sample department building virtual choir instruments for use in Ron Howard's Angels and Demons. Impressed by George's intuition and work ethic, the studio promoted him to programming cues for several other major projects including Public Enemies, The Boat That Rocked and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.   George returned to England to work in London with orchestrator and composer Julian Kershaw who had just begun a project for Nigel Kennedy, transcribing Duke Ellington pieces and arranging them for Kennedy's Orchestra of Life, for which he recruited George to transcribe. Due to Julian's other film commitments, George was trusted to orchestrate the majority of the pieces himself, and to eventually manage the project entirely. After thriving with this sudden responsibility, he was asked to assist orchestration on the movie Season of the Witch, and to engineer three string arrangements for U2. George had also impressed Nigel Kennedy with his project management and transcription skills and in the years following has orchestrated several more projects for him, including his major 2015 re-working of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, released on Sony.   Since moving to Bristol in 2012, George has played keyboards on over 200 commercially released tracks and remixes, a lot of which he co-wrote, for The Haggis Horns, Abstract Orchestra, MF Doom, Slum Village, The Lewis Express, Lack of Afro, The Unity Sextet, Junior Oliver, Fat Thumbs Ronnie, Alexia Coley, Emma Noble, Wax, Flevans and Herbal T to name a few. He has worked with several record labels on these projects including Tru Thoughts, ATA Records, Freestyle Records, Jalapeno Records, LOA Records and in 2019 he signed his highly-acclaimed Bristol band The Jazz Defenders to Haggis Records. George has also composed and produced string arrangements for Tristan McKay, Adam Isaac, Damian Hirst, Jay James, The Jazz Defenders and Lack of Afro's album "Hello Baby", which was included in BBC6 music's top 20 albums of the year in 2016.   In January 2017, George was headhunted to be the keyboard player in The Haggis Horns, the members of which have toured and recorded with Jamiroquai, John Legend & The Roots, Amy Winehouse, Corrine Bailey Rae, Take That, Mark Ronson, Martha Reeves, Elbow and Robbie Williams. George contributed extensively to their fourth studio album "One Of These Days", released in October 2017 and also their fifth album "Stand Up For Love" released in Spring 2020.   Also in 2017 George joined one of the UK's most renowned Jazz/Hip-Hop acts, The Abstract Orchestra. As well as touring with the 16-piece ensemble he also worked on their last two albums, Madvillain: Vol.1 and Madvillain: Vol.2, and in 2019 toured with Slum Village and played on their studio album Slum Village X Abstract Orchestra: 2020, a major re-working of the Slum Village album, Fantastic: Vol.2.   George is also the piano player in The Lewis Express, a piano led homage to the likes of Ramsay Lewis, which has two albums out on ATA records, and George's own project The Jazz Defenders, an explosive, original Bristol-based nod to Blue Note Jazz, released their debut album on Haggis Records in 2019.

contact:	george.jazzpiano@gmail.com
homepage:	www.georgecooper.co.uk
	Click on the logo to see George's tour dates.

King Phoenix Haggis Records HRCD006

George Cooper, piano, organ, Wurlitzer, percussion Nicholas Dover, tenor sax Nick Malcolm, trumpet, flugelhorn Atholl Ransome, flute John Pearce, violin Will Harris, bass Ian Matthews, drums Doc Brown, vocals Herbal T, vocals Leigh Coleman, vocals

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