Phil Minton

Phil Minton (born November 2, 1940 in Torquay, Devon, Great Britain) is a singer of avant-garde jazz and free improvisational music who began as a jazz trumpeter. As a vocalist, he is considered a fixture in the free improvisation scene with “almost unbelievable and uncanny sounds for which there is nothing comparable far and wide” (Bert Noglik).
Minton, whose parents were singers and who sang in the church choir, received his first trumpet lessons at the age of fifteen. Between 1959 and 1961 he played in the Brian Weldon Quintet in Devon. In 1962 he moved to London, where he worked with Mike Westbrook, whose band he played in Las Palmas (1964/65) and Sweden (1966 to 1971) for many programs from 1971 to 1990 (e.g. On Duke’s Birthday ) and international tours. Through Westbrook he came to sing and came into contact with London’s avant-garde and free jazz scene.
In 1975 he founded the vocal quartet Voice with Julie Tippetts, Maggie Nicols and Brian Ely. From the same year he developed a solo program. Since the 1980s he has appeared in various constellations at relevant festivals around the world, initially working with Fred Frith, Roger Turner, Günter Christmann, Peter Brötzmann and Willi Kellers, and later with Radu Malfatti and Phil Wachsmann (Raphiphi) John Zorn (Angelica 94) or Tom Cora (Roof). At the same time, he took part in film scores and recordings by Lindsay Cooper, theater productions by Mike Figgis, performances by Georg Gräwe’s GrubenKlangOrchester, Tony Oxley’s Celebration Orchestra and multidisciplinary works by the composer Konrad Boehmer. Since 1987, the collaboration with the pianist Veryan Weston has resulted in several CDs, of which the oratorio for choir “Songs from a Prison Diary”, which is based on texts by Ho Chi Minh, is particularly worth mentioning.
Minton played a key role as vocal soloist in the European premiere of Carla Bley’s “Escalator over the Hill” in 1997. He also worked with numerous improvisation artists such as Thomas Lehn and Axel Dörner (who together form the trio TOOT), Derek Bailey, Erhard Hirt, John Butcher and Bob Ostertag. In 1998 he sang imaginary shanties in the Berlin band Frigg. He also worked in projects by Alfred Harth (Vladimir Estragon), Franz Koglmann (O Moon My Pin-Up, 1998), Klaus König, David Moss, Simon Nabatov, Paul Hubweber, Uli Böttcher (Schnack) and Oliver Schwerdt (EUPHORIUM_freakestra Free Electric Supergroup, 2007) and can be heard in radio pieces by Grace Yoon, Andreas Ammer, FM Unit and Ulrike Haage.
In workshops, as a choir director under the name The Feral Choir, he teaches the (often very large numbers) participants his style of improvisational singing.
His singing style is full of ecstatic moments and imaginative noise enrichments with “ludicrous and artful rattling vocals” (Ulrich Ohlshausen). He also performs emotional ballads. In 1988 he was recognized by Jazz Forum magazine as the best male singer in Europe. He is involved in numerous recordings.