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Simon Atkinson

About Me

As a Jazz Vocalist for over 25 years, Simon Atkinson has drawn inspiration from the music of the great Crooners, Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Mel Torme ,Nat King Cole and more recently Harry Connick Jnr. He has performed his own interpretations of the classic standards over that time in a wide variety of countries and venues. With the dramatic resurgence of the genre Simon has found that interest and demand for his relaxed cool style of Jazz and Swing vocal has increased steadily over the past years.

Following a 7 year period performing overseas, In 2003 Simon returned to the UK and found new success in with individual performances throughout Britain and in France , but most significantly with the superb Veteran Jazz pianist and arranger Allan Baillie and his band The Ben Marcato Trio.

Allan has performed for over 4 decades with an enormous range of the very best Scottish Jazz musicians as he developed and performed with his 12 piece jazz orchestra in the 1980's and his legendary Al Baillie Trio in the 1990's. He has recorded for the BBC and is now well known all over Scotland for his solo Jazz piano work as well as his performances and arrangement work with The Ben Marcato Trio. Allan jokes that Simon has “pulled me out of retirement” but both Atkinson And Baillie freely admit that their colaboration is the most rewarding of either's career.

following thier appearance at The Ayr Jazz festival in 2004, Scotland's Ayrshire Post described the combo as:

“THE COOLEST VOCAL JAZZ AND SWING OF THE RAT PACK ERA PLUS SOME GREAT SURPRISES!” .

The trio features an exceptionally talented young drummer : Scott Mackay, from Ayrshire in Scotland who is Studying BA Applied Music at Strathclyde University. He has already performed with various acts and musicians around the country and toured with groups in Canada, America, Australia and NZ, Europe and Kuwait..

The recordings on this page feature veteran jazz drummer Graham King

Bassist Doug Galbraith is a young man with a great talent, although only 19 years old he has already perfomed in wide variety of prestigeous venues throughout Scotland.

Following an initial demo recording session in 2005, Simon Atkinson & Allan Baillie have concentrated on writing original material (established territory for Baillie but a new zone for Atkinson and certainly an exciting one for him as he has previously pursued a career performing other people's songs.) and expanding thier repertoir with thier own arrangements of classic standards and recently with contemporary songs by other artists, All this in preparation for recording thier own album FLY ME TO THE MOON which is now completed following several weeks at The WASHOOSE Studio with the infamous Dr Bone. The album is a collection of new original tracks, re-worked existing material plus thier own take on various classic standards mixed in.