Sam Watts is a pianist and composer living in London. He is known for playing Brazilian music and Jazz and has performed all over the world at clubs, festivals and concert halls including recent performances at the Royal Albert Hall, Paris Jazz festival, Wigmore Hall, Love Supreme festival, and many other festivals in Europe, Brazil and Asia. He has had his compositions performed on BBC radio 3 for the BBC proms and published by the ABRSM. He is a member of the Brazilian jazz trio Djangada and New Orleans jazz group the Dime Notes and has worked with many great performers including Jean Toussaint, Jason Miles, Jana Varga, Jason Marsalis, Emma Smith, Katie Thiroux, Jo Harrop and Judi Jackson.
BIOGRAPHY
Sam Watts is a pianist and composer specialising in Brazilian music and Jazz. Born in Birmingham U.K, he began playing at the age of 6. After taking an interest in improvisation and jazz as a teenager he eventually went on to study with scholarships at both Leeds College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music, where he won the Humphrey Lyttleton Prize. His early influences were jazz pianists such as Oscar Peterson, Herbie Hancock, Bill Evans and Erroll Garner, although he has always maintained an interest in classical music as well, and has extensively studied classical composition, counterpoint and orchestration. He is an established jazz pianist and has worked with artists including Jean Toussaint, Jason Miles, Jana Varga, Jason Marsalis, Emma Smith, Katie Thiroux, Jo Harrop and Judi Jackson.
He has performed internationally at numerous jazz festivals and concert venues, including performances at the Royal Albert Hall, Paris Jazz Festival, Wigmore Hall, Love Supreme Festival and numerous other concerts in Europe, Brazil and Asia, often performing his own compositions. He has also made live appearances on BBC Radio 2 and 3 and is regularly on tour internationally with various groups.
His playing style, while rooted in jazz improvisation, crosses many boundaries, including classical and romantic harmony and rhythms from all over the world. He is known for his specialisation in Brazilian music, and is a member of the brazilian piano trio Djangada, which has performed at festivals in Brazil and Europe as well as regular concerts in the UK, most recently a tour with saxophonist Jota P Barbosa. Sam has been a visiting lecturer at the Federal University of Bahia in Salvador, Brazil. He also works with many Brazilian acts in Europe, including Babo Moreno, Adriano Adewale, Jurandir Santana and many more.
He is also a member of the band The Dime Notes, playing virtuosic stride and early jazz arrangements of Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson and others and is considered a specialist in the stride piano style, performing traditional jazz festivals around europe on a regular basis with this group and others.
He has also taught at the prestigious Royal Academy of Music and Trinity College of Music in London and for the National Youth Jazz Collective (UK). As a composer he has written a lot of music for film, and has performed several of his original silent film scores at Wilton’s Music Hall in London (most recently F.W.Murnau’s Nosferatu and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis). His compositions have been broadcast on BBC radio 3 as part of the BBC proms, and included in the syllabus for the ABRSM grade 8 Jazz Piano syllabus. He has also written a string quartet and a set of 24 preludes for piano. He is also active as an arranger and has provided orchestrations for recent projects by Jana Varga and Jo Harrop amongst other recording projects.