Trevor Barlow

Currently, I am Head of Woodwind for Cambridgeshire Music providing music instruction and ensemble experiences for school age students across Cambridgeshire. I teach clarinet and saxophone and manage the Cambridgeshire Youth Wind Orchestra, Cambridge Youth Concert Band and Cambridge Youth Jazz Orchestra. My clarinet and saxophone quartet, The Ebony Quartet, has toured extensively across the United Kingdom with performances along London's South Bank, at the International Clarinet Congress in Paris and on British television. I have made several recordings with the Ebony Quartet, my Jazz Band Cambridge Blue and as a solo clarinetist. I am also a member of the Cambridge Wind Players.

Hugh Boyde

One of my biggest musical moments occurred around the age of 21 when listening to a recording of “After You’ve Gone” by the great gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. By the time the track was over I knew that I wanted to play that music, more than I wanted anything else. I spent the last year of college practising guitar obsessively, and since then have started up no less than four bands directly inspired by Django’s music. I have long since given up on actually trying to sound like the great master, but it has led to a lifelong love of all kinds of fretted instruments, and a career teaching and playing them. Apart from all the performing, my working life can emcompass anything from teaching a whole class of nine-year-olds how to play ukulele (in my day job for Cambridgeshire Music), to writing mandolin solo repertoire published by Astute Music. My most recent teaching project is Ringing Strings, a new freelance venture offering tuition in a variety of fretted instruments to adults and children in Cambridgeshire. Other current playing projects are Cafe Mondiale (a mandolin and accordion duo featuring myself and Bert) and Skibboo, a new and as yet virtual band which has come together to record a CD of my own Celtic-inspired folk tunes.

Bert Santilly

I have played the accordion for more years than I care to remember and am well known in the accordion world as a teacher and performer. Apart from my work with Cafe Mondiale, I play as a solo musician; as a member of Simply Jazz, a quintet in which I double vibraphone, and as part of the Bungalow Boogaloo Band - a ceilidh band which has featured on Radio 4. Apart from the 3 CDs that Hugh and I have recorded together, my other recordings to date include "Reeling off the Tracks" and "Mosaic" with the Bungalow Boogaloo Band. I have also guested on "The Clock that Laughs" with The Usual Suspects, and Batanai Marimba, a Zimbabwean group playing the music of Southern Africa. I have run a number of successful jazz accordion workshops as well as more generic workshops around the country involving disabled and able-bodied musicians working together.

Home Page