Jay Phelps

Jay Phelps:

Jay Phelps is a Vancouver-born Canadian.  He performed for two years with the award-winning Surrey Youth Symphony Orchestra where he picked up a best soloist award.  He became the youngest artist to lead his own band at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, a feat he repeated the following year amidst much media attention.  At 17 Jay moved to London determined to immerse himself in the London jazz scene and immediately attracted the notice of Gary Crosby who offered him work with Jazz Jamaica, Nu Troop and, in 2002, the opportunity to be a Tomorrow’s Warrior. 

Citing Louis Armstrong, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown and Miles Davis as his main influences, Jay, a student at Trinity College of Music, Formally Co-leader of the new hit jazz sensation Empirical and a featured member of Dennis Rollins’ Badbone & Co, has performed with Andrew Hill, Wynton Marsalis, Ray Brown, John Hendricks, Nasheet Waits, George Benson, Jamie Cullum, Sir John Dankworth, Guy Barker, Amy Winehouse, Charlotte Church, Hugh Masakela and Jazz Jamaica..  In recent months Jay has recorded and toured with the sensational SkaCubano which features Cuba’s finest exports, and has put together an outfit under his own name. 

The Jay Phelps Quintet.  The band is dedicated to swinging in any climate from the more contemporary to the traditional.

The members include:

Shabaka Hutchins- Tenor Sax, Clarinet, Bass clarinet

Jonathan Gee- Piano

Karl Rasheed-Abel- Double Bass

Gene Calderazzo- Drums