Riley Stone-Lonergan

Hailing from Galway, Ireland, Riley Stone-Lonergan's primary focus as a music creator is improvisation, the element of Jazz that brings him the most joy. Riley’s entire life and career is driven by the desire to both improvise and hear other people improvise, it is the highest level of creativity and artistic expression. Riley plays in QOW Trio with Eddie Myer and British Jazz legend Spike Wells, who played from everyone from Dexter Gordon and Roland Kirk to Bobby Wellins and Tubby Hayes. QOW TRIO is a generation-spanning trio of diverse players who’ve come together, united by a love of the tradition, to explore the freedom that opens up within the three-way saxophone-bass-drums format. Their influences reach back across the history of the music, and look forward into its future. They released their second Album, The Hold Up, on Ubuntu Records in February 2024 to critical acclaim. BBC Music Magazine 5* - “a stunning achievement... the band transcends mere excellence and moves into the realms of the extraordinary”

Riley plays in Bag Of Bones with Rick Simpson, Will Glaser (Ruth Goller) and Oli Hayhurst (Pharoah Sanders) Bag Of Bones is a collaborative, leaderless band of four improvisers come together to explore their original compositions and free playing. They are about to release their first album, No One Gets Saved in late 2024.

Family Band is a ‘chordless quartet’ and a jazz ensemble of equals where there is no leader. All members compose works and the group was founded in 2015. Their 2023 album received critical acclaim “an extraordinary vibrancy that feels like it blows through the last seventy years of jazz history.”

Family Band have performed in Reykjavic Jazz Festival, Switzerland  and were chosen to represent the UK in Twelve Points Jazz Festival in Amsterdam in 2019

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