Geoff Eales

Geoff Eales (born 13 March 1951) is a Welsh jazz pianist, improviser and composer.

Born in Aberbargoed in the south Wales valleys, Eales began his musical education at the age of eight, in the late 1950s. His father Horace, pianist in a well-known local dance band, taught him to play the 12-bar blues. He was also introduced to piano masters Erroll Garner, George Shearing and Oscar Peterson, as well as Bud Powell, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.

Eales also underwent a more conventional musical education while a pupil at Lewis School, Pengam, learning classical piano and the French horn. He played the latter with the Glamorgan Youth Orchestra and, in 1968, with the National Youth Orchestra of Wales. He achieved a B.Mus (first-class honours) and a master's degree at Cardiff University and in 1980 was awarded a Ph.D for his large scale orchestral work "An American Symphony" and a setting of Dylan Thomas' poem "In the Beginning" for tenor, horn and piano. He also wrote a thesis entitled "Structure in the Symphonic Works of Aaron Copland".

Throughout his long career Geoff Eales has worked with pop stars, rock legends, country and blues singers, opera divas and artists from the world of musical theatre as well as vocalists and instrumentalists from the jazz world. He has played on countless soundtracks, TV shows and jingles, been a featured soloist with symphony orchestras and has composed a symphony, a piano concerto, A Sussex Rhapsody (the latter commissioned by the BBC Concert Orchestra) and numerous chamber works.

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