Performer:

Neil Maya LRSM ABRSM
Neil began playing music at an early age, taking up clarinet at age eight and piano age five. He progressed on to the saxophone as well when he was fifteen. Neil studied clarinet and piano at the Royal College of Music Junior Department up to the age of eighteen when he went on to study an unrelated degree. Throughout his degree studies Neil continued to play music on a frequent basis including playing principal clarinet with the Bedfordshire Youth Orchestra. During this time Neil became increasingly interested in playing jazz and other styles as well as classical music, especially on the saxophone. On completing his degree Neil embarked on a career of teaching and performing on clarinet and saxophone and has now been working professionally for the last twenty years.

Since moving to Devon in 2001 he has become increasingly busy as a saxophonist playing in many styles including classical and jazz throughout the South West including his own jazz quartet, The Neil Maya Quartet www.neilmayaquartet.co.uk, as well as The Drat Pack www.thedratpack.co.uk playing swing, soul motown and more, Lushlife www.lushlifedinnerjazz.co.uk playing background jazz at functions and Solar www.solarfunkymusic.co.uk playing funk, as well as other depping work. With his quartet he has played to much critical acclaim all over the Southwest of England and has produced three CDs; Out of the Woodshed (2006) and Bread and Circuses (2009) and the Brubeck Project LIve (2017). Neil also still loves to get back to his roots and play classical music whenever he can. Neil performed Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with The Dartmouth Orchestra in 2015 and in 2009 performed Concerto for Stan Getz by Richard Rodney Bennett with the Torbay Symphony Orchestra

As well as live performance Neil teaches clarinet, saxophone and improvisation privately. He also runs a number of groups including the South Devon Big Band and runs workshops on jazz improvisation including the East Prawle Jazz weekend as well as arranges and composes. Neil lives in Ashburton.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Neil Maya Quartet’s latest projects takes tunes from the cartoons and gives them the jazz treatment creating a high quality, fun evening of wonderful music, usually with some audience participation too.
From Frozen to The Flintstones; Top Cat to Toy Story; The Simpsons to Sesame Street. It’s jazz – but not as we know it
Friday 29th Aug 11.30am "upstairs"


A Tribute To Stan Getz
Tenor saxophonist Stan Getz, known as “The Sound”, was one of the twentieth Century’s most
influential jazz musicians. The Neil Maya Quartet is delighted to dive into the prolific musical legacy
that Stan left to the world. Stan released nearly 100 albums under his own name in his lifetime
(another 20 were released posthumously) as well as nearly 40 as a sideman and many compilations.
Catching the end of the big band era, especially with Woody Herman’s second herd (Four Brothers),
Stan went on to forge a prolific solo career in the 1950s before becoming one of the main instigators
of the bossa nova craze of the early 1960’s (The Girl From Ipanema, One Note Samba, Corcovado).
Stan continued to remain highly musically through the next 3 decades including an album of
Bacharach and David (What the World Needs Now) an album with a young Chick Corea (Captain
Marvel) and many more before stopping shortly before his death in 1991.
The quartet will take you through some of Getz’s most famous recordings, a few surprises as well as
his rather colourful life.
Expect to hear:
* The Girl From Ipanema
* Corcovado
* What The World Needs Now
* Four Brothers
* Captain Marvel
* One Note Samba
* Yesterdays
* My Funny Valentine
* The Peacocks
* It might as well be spring time
* And many more

- www.neilmayaquartet.co.uk/stan-getz

The Neil Maya Quartet has been playing throughout the South West and beyond for over twenty
years for arts centres, jazz venues, jazz festivals, festivals and rural touring schemes and more. Its
melodic, lyrical and dynamic approach to jazz, with its own compositions and re-workings of
standards, as well as projects such as the Brubeck Project, 1959, The Golden Year of Jazz, Cartoon
Jazz and the Jazz Funk Emporium regularly wow their audiences.