soloistJack continually seeks to introduce the tuba to the wider compositional world. He has worked with composers including Georges Aperghis, Helmut Lachenmann, Michael Finnissy, Vinko Globokar (giving the first ever performance of Juriritubaïoka to the composer himself) and Georg Friedrich Haas, programming their music alongside neglected solos from Mauricio Kagel, Luigi Nono, Elliott Carter, Franco Donatoni, Giacinto Scelsi , Karlheinz Stockhausen (including the UK première of the tuba version of In Freundschaft) and Sofia Gubaidulina.
He has commissioned and/or premièred seventeen solo works since 2016, many of which are being released in his Contemporary Music for Tuba series with Edition Gravis. He also seeks to engage an even younger generation of composers with the tuba, organising workshops with composition departments at, amongst others, the University of Oxford, Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey) and Columbia University in the City of New York.
Awards for his performances have included being a finalist or prize winner in the Wind Section of the 2013 Royal Over-Seas League Music Competition, the 2013 Bromsgrove International Musicians Competition, the 2012 Jeju Internation Wind and Percussion Competition in South Korea, and the Goronwy Jones Memorial Prize at the RNCM. Concerto performances include works by Tom Harrold (world première), Bruce Fraser and Roger Steptoe, as well as with the Hannover Tuba Ensemble in their award winning performance as part of the Klassik in der Altstadt concert series.
orchestras and ensemblesJack has held a contract with the Aalborg Sinfoniorkester, been on trial with BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and performed as a guest with, amongst others, the Hallé Orchestra, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, Hamburger Symphoniker and Niedersäschsiches Staatsorchester Hannover as well positions with the Lucerne Festival Academy, European Union Youth Orchestra and Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, working under conductors including Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Mark Elder, Heinz Holliger, Donald Runnicles and David Robertson. He is a member of neophon ensemble and Opera Lab Berlin, and has been invited to work with other new music ensembles including Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Proton Bern, Ensemble Musikfabrik, the Octandre Ensemble, Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, the London Sinfonietta and the Dresdner Sinfoniker.
Working on both historical instruments and modern reproductions, his work with ensembles focusing on historically informed performance practices includes a Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream on ophicleide with Spira Mirabilis, and a CD recording of Mendelssohn's Reformationssymphonie on serpent with Kammerakademie Potsdam, and an upcoming Brahms project on an early tuba made by Jake Klein.
Jack’s work on euphonium includes orchestral performancs of music from Gustav Holst, Richard Strauss and Luciano Berio, and smaller ensemble works from Walter Zimmermann and Per Nørgård. As a trombonist his work as ranged from alto trombone in Prometeo (Luigi Nono) with the Staatstheatre Darmstadt to contrabass trombone in Integrales (Edgar Varèse) in Roulette (Broolkyn, NY), as well as tenor trombone in the première production of Wir aus Glas (Yasutaki Inamori) at the Deutsche Oper.
He has also performed music from Miles Davis's Birth of the Cool to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Latin American folk music to aggressive jazz supporting Dizzee Rascal, most of which have featured his 1963 Conn 20K sousaphone. He works regularly with The Hot Botz Brass Band, a Manchester-based dub-step inspired collective of brass, drums and vocals that has performed at music festivals around the UK, events ranging from underground club nights to BBC Children in Need, and with Australian circus group the Tom Tom Crew at the Edinburgh Festival. Their first album and other recordings can be found on Spotify, YouTube or SoundCloud.
composer, arranger, orchestratorJack's composition studies began at the University of Manchester, initially with Richard Whalley and later with Professor Philip Grange. His student works include Visitors for chamber ensemble which was selected for performance by the University's New Music Ensemble. Since graduating, his works have concentrated on exploring the tuba, including Edges of Consciousness comissioned by David Wishart, and Divertimento commissioned by Jens Bjørn-Larsen for the Hannover Tuba Class. His work Engführung, Reflexionen nach Texten von Paul Celan for tuba and harp was commissioned by Hans Nickle and the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, and premièred at the Funkhaus in Cologne in March 2015.
He has arranged music ranging in scope and style from solo and duo works by Telemann, Rachmaninoff, Vivaldi and Lakmé, to ensemble works by John Williams, Michael Kamen and Jacob Gade. They have been included in a masterclass with David Childs at the 2010 International Tuba Euphonium Conference, as part of the RNCM Opera under Mark Shanahan, and at the Black Dyke Band Brass Festival. He has also created a piano reduction of Kalevi Aho's Tuba concerto in collaboration with the composer, publishers Fennica Gehrman and original soloist Øystein Baadsvik, digitised manuscripts to create performance editions of works from Händel to Nørgård, and engraved the works of Roger Steptoe for publication by Editions BIM (Switzerland).
Jack is currently signed as a composer and arranger to Potenza Music, a specialist wind publisher based in Kentucky, USA. A catalogue of currently published works can be found here.
Jack studied conducting with Mark Heron at the University of Manchester, serving as assistant for many orchestral and ensemble concerts, performances included directing the RNCM Brass Ensemble at the 35th Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte di Montepulciano (Italy), conducting a rare performance of Fausto Romitelli's Professor Bad Trip Lesson II alongside many new compositions with New Music Ensemble, and a season working with the Manchester University Wind Orchestra featuring Symphony in B flat by Paul Hindemith and Lincolnshire Posy by Percy Granger, the latter being performed at the National Concert Band Festival. He also was conductor and musical director for Chimera Opera (Rochdale, UK) for productions of Don Giovanni (Mozart) and La Cenerentola (Rossini).
As a choral singer, Jack's career began in the childrens' chorus at Glyndbourne Opera House in productions of Otello (Verdi) with the Festival Opera and Carmen (Bizet) with the Touring Opera. He has since performed in groups ranging from chamber ensembles to symphonic choruses and full-scale musical theatre productions, encompassing music from Gregorian plainchant to the present day. He has worked as a lay clerk at Salford Cathedral, with the St. Philip Neri Singers and St. Mary's Warrington, been broadcast frequently (live and pre-recorded) on BBC Radio 3, 4 and the World Service as part of the Manchester Chamber Choir, and performed with the Manchester Camerata under Nicholas Kramer, BBC Philharmonic under HK Gruber and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Andris Nelsons.
As a teacher he has worked with students from beginner to undergraduate level across the whole lower brass family including masterclasses to tuba and euphonium students at colleges across Europe, and having learned the piano from a young age, he has given music theory/harmony and counterpoint tuition, and acted as repetiteur/coach for numerous professional vocalists.
A number of Jack's writings have been published, including reviews for TEMPO: A Quarterly Review of New Music by Cambridge University Press, in the Annual Report from The Leverhulme Trust, and blog articles for LUCERNE FESTIVAL ALUMNI where he also works as a Content Manager. He is currently preparing a book on the playing techniques of tuba for Bärenreiter-Verlag, due for publication in 2020.
He is a fully trained mentor in Peer Assisted Student Support from the University of Manchester. Outreach work has included school concerts (solo and ensemble) throughout Greater Manchester as well as his work as a member of Live Music Now, and he was awarded a scholarship from FOCUNA to take part in the Music Education Academy 2017 at the Philharmonie Luxembourg. He was also assistant manager of Vaganza, the University of Manchester New Music Ensemble (the largest of its kind in the UK) for the 2009/10 season.
conductor, vocalist, author, teacherJack is currently a PhD candidate in performance practice research at the Royal Northern College of Music under supervision from Dr. David Horne and Dr. Martin Iddon, generously supported by Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom through the North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership.
Until 2018 he was a member of the Solo Class at the Hochschule für Musik, Theatre und Medien in Hannover, Germany under Professor Jens Bjørn-Larsen, having completed his Master of Music in 2013. His studies in Germany were generously supported by the Countess of Munster Musical Trust, the Deutsche Akademische Austauchdienst (German Academic Exchange Service), the Sir James Caird's Travelling Scholarship Trust, and a Study Abroad Studentship from The Leverhulme Trust.
At undergraduate level Jack studied in Manchester, UK, graduating in 2010 with a first class honours Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Manchester, specialising in composition, analysis and aesthetics. He simultaneously studied tuba at the Royal Northern College of Music with Robin Haggart, Brian Kingsley and Ewan Easton MBE, being awarded 95% in his graduate diploma final examination in 2011.
He has participated in masterclasses across Europe with many esteemed brass pedagogues, including Roger Bobo, Øystein Baadsvik, Håken Hardenberger, Michael Lind, Mel Culbertson, James Gourlay, Roland Szentpalí, Les Neish, Stefan Heimann, Hans Nickel, Oren Marshall, Kristian Steenstrup and Dirk Hirte.
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