Biography
Jonny Gee is one of the UK’s most versatile double bassists, bringing his energy and enthusiasm to a wide variety of projects. He has performed, recorded and broadcast with many top artists and groups all over the globe, including Ravi Shankar, Antonio Forcione, ZUM, Jacqui Dankworth, English Touring Opera, Joanna Eden and The Sixteen.
Jonny plays everything from baroque and chamber music to jazz, salsa and tango-nuevo. He has appeared on many CDs, film & TV soundtracks and broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 & 4, as well as Deutsche Radio, while his playing was filmed for the Bass episode of Howard Goodall’s Channel 4 series “How Music Works”.
He studied (variously classical, jazz & baroque double bass) with Chi-chi Nwanoku, Simon Woolf, Pete Moore and Mette Hanskov at Trinity College of Music, University of London & the Danish Royal Conservatory.
Jonny has worked with conductors including Paul Goodwin and Diego Masson and performed at all the top concert venues in London (including Wigmore Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Barbican, QEH & the Purcell Room) as well as at Ronnie Scott’s, The Vortex, The 606 & The 100 Club plus venues across Europe, North America, the Middle East and New Zealand.
He has broadcast & toured internationally with La Mariposa Tango from Buenos Aires and with Columbian timbalero Roberto Pla’s Latin Jazz Ensemble and also appears regularly with King Salsa and Robin Jones’ Latin Sextet.
In the jazz field Jonny has performed with many of the UK’s top jazz artists, including Jacqui Dankworth, Zoë Rahman, Pete King, Pete Long, Mark Nightingale, Anthony Kerr & Anita Wardell. He is also featured on an award-winning CD by Dutch Manouche Gypsy swing guitarist Lollo Meier.
An enthusiastic educationalist, he set up & directed Dartington International Summer School’s first Salsa Music course with members of his latin group Montuno. He also runs his own dance band - The Jazzberries - which has performed at 10 Downing Street and Elton John’s White Tie & Tiara Ball.
Always up for interesting collaborations, Jonny works with poet Jehanne Markham and creates live text-based impro in Ruthie Culver’s Utter:Jazz Collective (for whom he is MD) and has performed with the Chinese Yin Yang Ensemble, while the most dangerous thing his bass has ever done was working with Linbury Prize-winnng acrobat Gisele Edwards.
With Cuban band Bombele Orquesta, Jonny helped set a Guinness World Record synchronized dance-stretch with 17,500 women & 500 men(!) in bras at Breast Cancer’s Moonwalk, and he’s even played bass guitar in A Bad Idea with Queen drummer Roger Taylor & comedian Ben Elton on vocals.
Jonny practices Tai Chi & is a keen freediver, currently in training for an underwater performance of John Cage’s avant-garde masterpiece 4’33” transcribed for submerged double bass – on a single breath of air...
