Jill Grant

Jill began singing very early in life - her parents told her she was singing melody lines before she could speak. At seven she discovered jazz when she heard Count Basie’s “One O'clock Jump”. “It jumped out and grabbed me,” she said. From that moment on, she was hooked.

Jill listened to anything and everything all through her childhood and teens - from Jelly Roll Morton to Ornette Coleman, and while at art college she began singing in jazz clubs in Birmingham where she was a student. Since then she has formed her own trio and quartet. Her regular musicians include Alan Berry and Richard Madgwick (piano), Ernie Cranenburgh (guitar), Dave Quincy (saxophones) and Mick Durell (bass). She has worked at the Watermill, Dorking and regularly at Pissarro’s, Hastings. Musicians she has worked with recently include Simon Woolf, John Burch, Kenny Shaw, Jim Richardson, Dave Quincy, Stan Robinson, Roland Lacey, Geoff Castle and Mike Cotton. She works in London - gigs there include the 100 Club, Shepherd's Restaurant, Belgravia, The Green, East Dulwich, the Forester's Arms, Forest Hill, the Park Lane Hotel, Piccadilly and HMS Belfast, to uniformly good receptions. She is a member of the Count Basie Society and recently gave them a presentation "Billie and the Basie-ites" which was well received. Some plaudits: "A fine singer" - Art Themen, "Jill's pitch is stunning" - John Mumford, "Jill sings straight from the heart" - Trudy Kerr, "Jazz can mean many things to many people but there is unanimous agreement that Jill's singing has all the necessary jazz elements" Alun Morgan (just a sample)

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