Billy Marrows

Billy Marrows is a London-based award-winning guitarist, composer, and arranger. He leads the Billy Marrows Band and chamber-jazz project Grande Família, and performs with a wide range of other projects, including Huw V Williams’ Di-Cysgodion, Docklands Sinfonia, Tom Ridout Quintet, Chelsea Carmichael and Patchwork Jazz Orchestra. He appears on numerous albums including Sam Newbould’s Bogus Notus and Tom Barford's Bloomer, released on Edition Records. Billy also regularly performs solo in Jimi Hendrix's bedroom at the Handel Hendrix House museum.

Shortlisted for Album of the Year in the 2025 Parliamentary Jazz Awards, Billy's debut Penelope was recorded in summer 2023 as a surprise for his mother during her struggle with cancer. Released in January 2024 in Penny’s memory, all proceeds go to World Child Cancer, raising over £6,000. For the recording, Billy created Grande Família, featuring family members and close collaborators, including Portuguese Young Musician of the Year 2025 Teresa Macedo Ferreira on viola. Penelope received critical acclaim, including 4 stars and Editor's Choice in Jazzwise.

Grande Família perform in three configurations: 12-piece, sextet, and chamber quartet. Their debut at Pizza Express Jazz Club sold out more than two months in advance and was released as a live album on Discus Music in March 2025. The Penelope Album Live received 4 stars in both Jazzwise and All About Jazz, noting that it "magnifies the invention, charm and compositional strength of the original". Billy released the EP Mount Tibidabo with Grande Família Sextet in November 2024, also receiving 4 stars in Jazzwise. 

Grande Família’s nine-date spring 2025 UK tour included Sheffield Jazz, Watermill Jazz, and NQ Jazz, alongside a sold-out two-night residency at Pizza Express Jazz Club. Other 2025 highlights include Scarborough Jazz Festival and the Royal Albert Hall's Elgar Room, also sold-out in advance. Billy’s next album, Dancing on Bentwood Chairs, will be released in February 2026, featuring the Billy Marrows Band.

Billy won the 2019 Eddie Harvey Jazz Arranger of the Year Award and both the 2016 small ensemble and 2018 big band categories of the Dankworth Prize for Jazz Composition. His composition Genmaicha was released by Patchwork Jazz Orchestra, and he has received commissions from singer-songwriter Hohnen Ford, Berlin-based Fabia Mantwill Orchestra, and Seville-based vocalist Lovis G. He wrote a gamelan-inspired suite for the 2016 Lancaster Youth Jazz Commission and studied with Vince Mendoza on the 2018 Metropole Orkest Arrangers Workshop in Holland, where his arrangement was performed by the Metropole Orkest and Becca Stevens.

Billy graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in 2017 with a first-class degree in jazz guitar. He is involved in a range of music education work, including for Guildhall Young Artists, the National Youth Jazz Collective, and as a jazz guitar lecturer at Morley College. 

Billy is grateful for the support of Arts Council England, Help Musicians UK, the Sir John Barbirolli Memorial Foundation, and the Richard Turner Fund.

Awards

Debut album Penelope shortlisted for Parliamentary Jazz Awards Album of the Year

Eddie Harvey Arranger of the Year 2019

Dankworth Prize for Jazz Composition - Large Ensemble 2018

Dankworth Prize for Jazz Composition - Small Ensemble 2016

Lancaster Youth Jazz Commission 2016

Watermill Jazz Young Composers Competition 2012 - 1st Prize 

Gear

Collings I35lc

Fender Princeton 

Martin 000-18