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Marco Anderson

Musician, Composer & Producer for over 30 years, plays mainly drums, guitar and keyboards as well , founder of Foxy Productions Jazz Record Label in the UK.

About Me

My father was a drummer in the Band of the Royal Marines, although he preferred to play harmonica and the comb and paper. My mother taught me to sing the whole of the “King & I” by the time I was 3.

However I survived this to become a mostly self taught musician, interested firstly in the Blues Music revival in the UK in the late 60's. I preferred the Stones to the Beatles but I rejected Pop music quite early on when I discovered the Progressive Rock music of Hendrix, Cream, The Groundhogs and Chicago Transit Authority, who's first double album was the first album I saved up for and bought myself (1969). But it was odd things like Charlie Mingus's “Mingus Ah Um”, Ravi Shankar Live and Soft Machine that, whilst I didn't understand this music, I knew it contained elements that I had been looking for.

Despite the complexity of Prog Rock it was still leaving me feeling there was something else to music. One day a good friend who ran a record shop in Hereford UK, played me the Mahavishnu Orchestra's Bird of Fire. This was a moment of 'awakening' for me and I realised that this was what I had been waiting to hear. From this I discovered Weather Report, RTF, King Crimson and a little later the key to all this new music - Miles Davis. From him I went backwards in time through the Jazz history, with Coltrane, Parker, and finally the great Duke Ellington. The Duke's music gave me a great love of the big band sound which I enjoy to this day.

I play drums for The Groundhogs, legendary progressive blues/rock band, Conspiracy of Equals, an free improvisating jazz collective, Present Tense, an improvising power fusion trio in the UK which often features the wonderful Paul Dunmall on saxes and recently US Fusion legend John Serry on keyboards.

I also have an anarchic punk-jazz band called the Bird Architects, for which I compose as well as play drums and keyboards.

My guitar quartet, The Wild Strings, have released a CD of pastoral arrangments of John McLaughlin's compositions, a review of which can be found elsewhere on this site.