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Tony Haynes

Tony Haynes was one of four co-founders of Grand Union in 1982, acts as artistic director and writes or arranges most of its music. Here he gives a brief outline of his musical career and describes why the Company is so important to him:

Early days

“I invented my first piece of music on my grandma’s parlour piano around the age of six, and at that point knew I would be a composer.”

My family wasn’t particularly musical – my mother played the piano, there were stories of a great uncle who was the organist of Toronto Cathedral and Uncle George and cousin David were clarinettists in an award-winning military band – but everyone loved music, and regularly sang in choirs that performed Messiah at Christmas and Stainer’s Crucifixion at Easter.

I spent most of my childhood and teenage years in a North Berkshire country town, where I had piano lessons with the stern Mrs Lambert, sang in the choir (and later played the organ) in the local church. From the age of 13 – as National Service was claiming the more experienced semi-pro musicians – I would play piano most Friday nights and Saturdays in Les and Ellie Birt’s Versatile Players or ‘Bopper’ Bailey’s band for dances and weddings across the Berkshire downs; and then I discovered jazz and blues, and joined a couple of brass bands to acquire a trombone as the New Orleans revival took off.

At school I took up the viola, taught by the inspirational Frances Kitching, who gave me opportunities I didn’t deserve, given my technical shortcomings and reluctance to practise; she nurtured me and gave me unstinting encouragement and criticism, until she died tragically young. I also directed our cadet force band (with the invented rank of lance-sergeant!) and organised various jazz groups. In music theory I was entirely self-taught, and passed O-level and A-level Music without formal teaching. I scraped into Oxford via a classics scholarship, but was offered a place on condition I study something else! I readily opted for Music.

I relished the highly academic discipline of the Oxford music degree in those days, loved writing fugues and five-part counterpoint, and took twelve-tone music as a special subject in Finals, with Egon Wellesz – a real composer, pupil of Schoenberg! – as my tutor. Two close friends and I ran the popular and well-off University Jazz Club in our final year; we lived in an enormous house in North Oxford where famous musicians (and often whole bands) up from London could be tempted with a bottle of whisky or two to jam into the night with us student musicians; by this stage modern jazz piano – I loved Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner – was my speciality. I emerged that summer with a respectable BA class 2:1.

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Profile

Tony Haynes Has Left Town... But What A Legacy He Leaves Behind

Read "Tony Haynes Has Left Town... But What A Legacy He Leaves Behind" reviewed by Duncan Heining


The death of my friend musician/composer Tony Haynes aged 83 from cancer is a loss both to his wife and children and to the musical communities of East London whom he served with such passion. A jazz enthusiast from his early teens, he studied music at Oxford and Nottingham, while at the latter working simultaneously as musical director at the Nottingham Playhouse. Later at the Liverpool Everyman, he composed scores for plays by left-wing playwrights like John Arden, Adrian Mitchell ...

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Big Band in the Sky

Tony Haynes 1941 - 2024

Read "Tony Haynes 1941 - 2024" reviewed by Chris May


It is with great sadness that All About Jazz reports the passing of Tony Haynes, the founder and for over 40 years the creative director of London's Grand Union Orchestra (GUO). Haynes left us on 17 September 2024. Under his visionary leadership, GUO did much to take forward the idea of jazz as a multi-cultural artform, and to celebrate the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic city that London is, representing Haynes' hopes for the world--hopes that he did not just sit back and ...

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Album Review

Grand Union Orchestra: Made By Human Hands

Read "Made By Human Hands" reviewed by Chris May


Grand Union Orchestra, which has mentored many young London jazz musicians over four decades, is approximately aligned with the grassroots organisations Tomorrow's Warriors and Kinetika Bloco. The longest established of the trio, Grand Union took wing in 1982, Tomorrow's Warriors in 1991, Kinetika Bloco in 2000. Made By Human Hands is a greatest hits compilation celebrating Grand Union's 40th Anniversary. The ensemble was founded by trombonist, keyboardist, composer and community activist Tony Haynes, who continues to lead ...

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