Oliver Whitehead
| Oliver Whitehead | |
|---|---|
Oliver Whitehead in 2013
|
|
| Background information | |
| Born |
29 August 1948 Oxford, England, United Kingdom |
| Genres | Jazz, classical |
| Occupation(s) | Guitarist, composer, teacher |
| Instruments | Guitar |
| Years active | 1968–present |
| Labels | Justin Time, IBS, Angel Air |
| Associated acts | Linda Hoyle, Mo Foster, The Antler River Project |
Oliver Whitehead is a guitarist and composer, originally from England, who has worked mostly in Canada. He is an Associate Composer at the Canadian Music Centre. His orchestral works include the oratorio We Shall be Changed (1993), Concerto For Oboe (1996) and Pissarro Landscapes (2000). His jazz album Free For Now was nominated for a Juno Award as Best Jazz Album of 1985. He has composed for, and played with, many individual musicians and groups over the years, most recently world music/jazz group The Antler River Project, the singer Linda Hoyle and the music producer and songwriter/composer Mo Foster. The Fetch, a new album of original songs by Linda Hoyle, Mo Foster and Whitehead, was released in August 2015.
Oliver's father Henry Whitehead was a mathematician at Balliol College, Oxford, and a codebreaker at Bletchley Park during World War II. His son knew almost nothing of the latter fact until 1995, three decades after his father's death, when the Official Secrets Act on WWII service expired. His mother Barbara began a career as a concert pianist (under her maiden name Smyth), but spent most of the 1950s and 60s running a farm that the family bought in the tiny village of Noke, near Oxford. Barbara's first cousin was the operatic tenor Peter Pears, partner of composer Benjamin Britten. Pears and Britten were close with the Whiteheads, often exchanging visits.
Oliver grew up in a home where classical music was highly valued—and jazz was little understood and rarely played. His parents tried to give him formal piano lessons. Instead, Oliver taught himself guitar and, by means of the radio and his wind-up 78 rpm gramophone, soon discovered all the British chart-toppers of the day, such as Tommy Steele, Lonnie Donegan and Cliff Richard, later finding more advanced models in Andres Segovia and Django Reinhardt.
...
Wikipedia