Guitar great makes anniversary trip to arts centre

The first one for Britain's best known jazz guitarist, Martin Taylor, is a 13-date trip around the country, which celebrates his 60th birthday and 45 years as an international touring artist, and arrives in Colchester later this month.

Then later in December Martin and his wife will be going on a very different trip, this time on the Queen Mary to New York, to mark their 40th anniversary.

It's a cruise that is particularly poignant for Martin because that's where his musical journey really kicked-off.

"It was on the QE II," he tells me, "and I was just 16 at the time. I remember the ropes being pulled up as we were setting off and thinking 'there's no going back now'. But I had been playing with the guys for a while in London and it's something we had all wanted to do. At the time I was the youngest musician ever to play on a Cunard ship but when we go on the Queen Mary we will be paying customers this time around and someone else will be playing the tunes."

Living in Scotland most of his life, Martin was born and raised in Harlow until, at the age of 15, he left school and started playing with Dixieland Bands in London.

"I started playing the guitar when I was four," Martin adds, "but I remember my father bringing home a red ukulele with a palm tree on it when I was about three.

"My father played in bands and a little later on, when I was around 11, I started playing gigs with him. At 14 I was already playing with bands in London and then a year later I left school to take it up professionally."

His two years in London, followed by the next two performing on cruise ships in and around the Caribbean, set the foundation for a promising career in music but as Martin admits himself he owes everything to his meeting up with the legendary jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli.

"The reason I was playing the guitar was Django Reinhardt," Martin says, "and here I was sitting in Django's chair working with the man who had performed with him in the Hot Club of Paris.

"At times it was a little surreal but he was incredibly generous. My father once asked whether he directed me but he never did. He just liked the way I played and we got on incredibly well."

From 1979 to 1990, Martin toured the world and recorded more than 20 albums with the French jazz violin legend, their album with Vassar Clements Together At Last picking up a Grammy Nomination in 1987.

A culmination, of sorts, of his time with Stephane took place in 2012, when English jazz trumpeter and composer. Guy Barker translated themes created by Martin into an orchestral suite, The Spirit Of Django that was then performed at the BBC Proms.

Today Martin is considered one of Britain’s best jazz guitarist’s of all time.

It was his ground breaking solo album Artistry, produced by Steve Howe and released in 1992, which launched his career as an international solo artist. The album was number one in the HMV Jazz Charts for a record 12 weeks and after two very successful albums for Sony/Columbia, Kiss and Tell and Nitelife, he went on to record several albums for label.

He has performed more than a hundred recordings to date and has been awarded two honorary doctorates for the guitar. He has also amassed a record 14 British Jazz Awards as a guitarist while several of his albums have been in the Top 10 in the USA and Europe.

In addition to his solo concerts and recordings, Martin has also collaborated with musicians from many different musical genres, including Jeff Beck, Bill Wyman, Chet Atkins, and George Harrison.

Now an MBE, for services to jazz music, in 2010, the Martin Taylor Guitar Academy was launched, an online guitar school that is perhaps one of Martin's greatest achievements.

"From that little council house in Harlow," he begins, "I do occasionally have to pinch myself with where my music has taken me and so yes I do enjoy passing on what I've learnt to the next generation of musicians.

"I started the on-line guitar school seven years and at first it was a little difficult because I had to analyse exactly what I was doing to come up with a method that I could teach."

Now with students in more more than 80 countries, he's already had some measured success with Slovakian gypsy jazz guitarist Andreas Varady signed to Quincy Jones' label and another of his students writing songs for a new film.

Something that Martin is himself not adverse to with his credits including the French comedy Milou En Mai directed by Louis Malle, and more recently his composition, Green Lady being featured in the Andrew Piddington movie The Killing of John Lennon.

His many TV credits include the theme music for After You’ve Gone featuring Nicholas Lyndhurst and Celia Imrie, and the cult Nicole-Papa TV commercials for the Renault Clio.

Martin also can lay claim to the penning of the theme tune to a Japanese soap opera.

"Yes," he laughs, "funnily enough a lot of the music I've written is most popular in the Far East because my songs have melodies and they like a good melody in Japan and Korea.

"In fact one of the loveliest renditions of one of my songs was done by a Korean band played on traditional Korean instruments and sung in Korean. It was fabulous."

Martin Taylor with support from Frank Weatherley Trio

Colchester Arts Centre,

Church Street, Colchester.

Tuesday, October 18. Doors open 7pm, show starts 7.30pm.

£16, £14 concessions. 01206 500900.

www.colchesterartscentre.com