Ray D'Inverno

About the show

We're pleased to welcome back veteran pianist Ray D’Inverno who last visited in Oct 2024. The previous year 2023 was a milestone for Ray as he reached 80 years of age, and celebrated his birthday with a sell-out gala concert at Southampton's Turner Sims concert hall featuring Quintessential Groove with special guests including his son Mark D'Inverno [also a pianist] and tenor sax star Ed Jones.
Quintessential Groove have been booked for Swanage Jazz Festival in July 26, so this is something of a warm-up gig for that prestigious event.
Ray is based near Dorchester, but for many years ran Southampton Jazz Club alongside his career as a Professor of Mathematics and General Relativity at Southampton University. Ray has performed alongside many of the UK’s greatest players, and has released recordings featuring Jim Mullen, Stan Sulzmann, Tony Roberts and many more. He has been leading his current band Quintessential Groove for the past decade. Tonight they will be playing music from their recent CD release All In The Same Boat, which features eleven of Ray’s melodic but rhythmically varied compositions.
The band consists of highly rated Canadian saxophonist Terry Quinney [Sound of BlueNote], Andy Hague - trumpet, Ray D’Inverno - piano, with Bristol's Will Harris stepping in on bass. We're also very pleased to have local legend Tony Orrell guesting on drums, who whilst a regular fixture up at Bristol Music Club in Clifton has not played at the Be-Bop for many years.