Tim Harvey an experienced and versatile musician based in Liverpool
Welcome to my world....
About
Early Days
I was born in Liverpool in the 'swinging 60s' and started to learn the piano when I was 6, still wearing my mum's knitted cardigans. We had a lovely Chappell piano in the house and I had loads of time to play it, without today's distractions (and only 3 channels on the TV). I did all the usual ABRSM exams: at Grade 1, my feet wouldn't reach the pedals; some days, they still can't!!
I went to the Blue Coat School and fell in love with music, and was lucky enough to be able to play the pipe organ in the school chapel each morning before school, and in weekday assemblies. Here I learned a great variety of repertoire, as well as discovering how to improvise, how to refine, shape and structure musical ideas, also exploring how to disguise well-known melodies and TV theme tunes into my musical meanderings, engineered to intrigue (some of) my listeners!
I do have mixed feelings about some other parts of my education, as BCS in the 1970/80s wasn't a place for the faint-hearted, but musically it offered me refuge and a safe space to explore my growing interest in the beautiful and eclectic world of music.
Uni & Teaching Years
I took Music and Languages at A Level, then read Music at Durham University where I was Organ Scholar at Hatfield College, studying with cathedral organist Richard Lloyd, then back in Liverpool with Noel Rawsthorne, when doing my PGCE at St.Katherine's College (now Hope Uni). My first proper job was a piano teacher and organist at Giggleswick School (in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales), then Director of Music there for ten years; later at Liverpool College, and The King's School, Chester.
Over the course of my career I have been lucky enough to tour, play and record in Paris (Notre-Dame, St. Sulpice & La Madeleine), Berlin (the year before the Wall came down!), Sydney, Brisbane, Prague, Colmar, Strasbourg, Conneticut, Virginia, Ohio and New York; am also proud to have taken students to play in Birdland jazz club, home of jazz legend Charlie Parker, and also in Times Square and at the Statue of Liberty.
I also remember fondly being Musical Director for such wonderful shows as West Side Story, Jesus Christ Superstar, South Pacific & Annie get your Gun (with the Giggleswick 'dream team' of David fox & Michael Day), and Les Miserables with Gareth Warburton and Jo Lee in my final term there; at Chester with Clare Howden & Julia Middleton for The Producers, Little Shop of Horrors, Oh ! What a Lovely War and Cabaret; also at Liverpool College with some great memories of The Sound of Music, Oklahoma, The Boy Friend and Joseph, and half of The Pirates of Penzance (yes, am taking some of the credit for this, deservedly).
All wonderful memories.
I also wrote incidental music for productions of Ibsen's Peer Gynt and Shakespears's A Midsummer Night's Dream. With long-term collaborator and librettist Michael Day, I wrote an operetta called Pizza Jurassica: critics called it 'unique' and 'unforgettable'; it closed after its first performance.
Freelance Days
I have always tried to challenge myself as a musician, beyond my classical roots by exploring different musical styles and immersing myself in them. I remember feeling a strong need for musical refreshment when I was at Giggleswick, lost in a cyclical world of concerts, endless Masses and Requiems, chamber recitals, musical face-offs, school House competitions; the world of Jazz provided a huge and new exciting challenge, and improvised music took on a new chapter for me.
In 1999 I met and befriended a school parent, John Helliwell (ex officio Supertramp), whose son was one of my gifted Music Scholars. To this day I remain profoundly influenced by my friendship and association with John and his journey through music. I remember escaping during 'free periods' for ad-hoc sessions in Stackhouse Lane, being exposed to new music; Keith Jarrett, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Cannonball Adderley, Brad Meldhau, Weather Report, Lynne Arriale, Herbie Hancock and Vince Mendoza. It was just the tonic ('kick up the backside') I needed, at the right time. I thought I knew it ALL, but suddenly realised I knew NOTHING. It was such a wonderful epiphany: music so well-crafted, lyrical, inventive, challenging, structured, but a music that I had no knowledge of before then.
What John taught me most importantly was: music is just music; styles aside, a beautiful sound is a beautiful sound. I now understand how musical worlds collide, their similarities and differences and how to merge them when I want to. A friend of mine (Bob) (yes, real name) said that BeBop is basically just the music of J.S.Bach, but 'swung'. He's right of course he is. The Jacques Loussier Trio were doing just that, decades ago. Music is so simple and so connected when you bother to distill it, merging the various accents and nuances of the different idioms.
I took months off work to play hundreds of songs in all twelve keys of music, learning new chord progressions and harmonic shapes and contours on the piano, with all the associated headaches of 'difficult' keys', and yes, some were pretty tricky. I felt at the time that I had learned more in those months than I had in my previous musical experience; probably untrue, but that's how it felt. Even now, if a singer asked me to play Fly me to the moon in Ab, I would say.....'Well, I could...but I'd rather not!!)
In 2006 I applied for and won a multi-thousand pound Arts Council England grant to run a Jazz education programme in Liverpool across schools in the city. This programme ran for three years and performed across a range of venues in LiverpooI and at an International Jazz Festival. I then pursued a freelance career in Liverpool, playing in various standards Trios, also embarking on a distance-learning diploma, and being awarded the Advanced Diploma in Jazz Performance from the University of St. Andrew's with Distinction.
These Days
Since then, and revisiting my interest in pipe organ I gained the prestigious Fellowship Diploma of the Royal College of Organists, and last summer the Licentiate Diploma from Trinity College, London. Today, I no longer 'mould minds' in the classroom, and am happily immersed in my own musical projects at home. I work as an examiner for ABRSM, I compose and arrange music in a variety of styles and am lucky to be in a position to pick and choose musical projects that interest or inspire me. Am a father of 3 lovely boys, whose various lifestyle choices seems to provide a continuous financial challenge, but whose love is both nourishing and enriching.
I hope that you will enjoy some of the music on this site. Some pieces are improvisations; others are composed and aimed at the developing pianist. There are also some links to organ repertoire on my Soundcloud site.
A tune what I wrote
Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb
Something I wrote back in 2006, performed by a band of great north-west jazz musicians; part of the Real Book North West project.