Tony Coe Recordings

Tony Coe (born 1934) was the first non-American to receive the jazz world’s ultimate accolade – the Jazzpar Prize, otherwise known as the ‘Jazz Nobel’, which he was awarded in 1995. He is a clarinettist,
saxophonist and composer. He was invited to join the Count Basie band and has also featured in the bands of Humphrey Lyttleton, John Dankworth, Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland, Stan Tracey and Henry Mancini
(playing the tenor saxophone theme in most of the Pink Panther films), working and recording with musicians including Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen Macrae, Buck Clayton, Ben Webster,
Cleo Laine, Joe Turner, Zoot Sims, Teddy Wilson, Ronnie Scott, Lee Konitz, Jimmy Rushing, Michel Legrand, Kenny Wheeler, Bob Brookmeyer and Clark Terry. He was musical director of Lady Day, a play about a period in the life of Billie Holiday, starring Dee Dee Bridgewater, in which he also featured as solo performer and actor. In 1999 he was invited to tour Europe with a band of Duke Ellington sidemen including trombonist Britt Woodman and bassist Jimmy Woode.

For several years he was a member of the chamber ensemble Matrix, founded by clarinettist Alan Hacker, performing and broadcasting music spanning a huge range of styles and periods, from the 11th-century cleric Hermannus Contractus through to Harrison Birtwistle. He has also played under the directorship of Pierre Boulez.

Tony solos on many film soundtracks, for instance in the seduction scene in Superman III, on solo clarinet with the orchestra in Blake Edwards’ Victor Victoria, which featured Julie Andrews, and on tenor sax and clarinet in Leaving Las Vegas by Mike Figgis.

As a composer Coe has several film scores to his credit including a two-hour piece for chamber orchestra to accompany the Marie Epstein silent film Peau de Pêche (1929). With the aid of Arts Council grants and various commissions he has produced several
large-scale works, many of which have been broadcast by the BBC.
He composed and/or arranged and played on every track of the world music album Les Voix d’ Itxassou (Disques Nato) which features artists as diverse as Marianne Faithful and the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré.

Pieces from his publication Jazzed up Too for clarinet and piano, an album combining arrangements of standards with his own compositions, are regularly set for the higher grades of the Trinity Guildhall exam board. The Associated Board of the Royal Schools
of Music commissioned him to write a piece for the clarinet volume in their awardwinning Spectrum series and it has been selected for the grade 6 clarinet examination syllabus. Tony has received the BT jazz clarinet award four times and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Music from the University of Kent.