TG Collective are an eclectic British-based ensemble, evolving from the successful acoustic guitar trio, Trio Gitano, in 2006. The TG Collective are based in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. Their sound draws on many influences, in particular

Flamenco Flamenco (), in its strictest sense, is an art form based on the various folkloric music traditions of southern Spain, developed within the gitano subculture of the region of Andalusia, and also having historical presence in Extremadura and ...

Gypsy Jazz Gypsy jazz (also known as gypsy swing, jazz manouche or hot club-style jazz) is a style of small-group jazz originating from the Romani guitarist Jean "Django" Reinhardt (1910–53), in conjunction with the French swing violinist Stéphane Gr ...

Jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

and contemporary

Classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also ...

, with interchanging shapes and sizes of ensemble within a performance. The group is centered on two

guitarists A guitarist (or a guitar player) is a person who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of guitar family instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves ...

, set alongside a core of

double bass The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or #Terminology, by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow (music), bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox addit ...

flute The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...

and

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

and

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

, whilst also featuring flamenco dance in some performances. The band issued an album, ''Release the Penguins'', in 2012, their first since their previous 2005 release as Trio Gitano. Release The Penguins has received plaudits from

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

Jazzwise ''Jazzwise'', launched in 1997, is the UK jazz monthly magazine. ''Jazzwise'' has a broad sub-genre coverage, from jazz, improv, hard bop, and jazz-rock to bebop and classic jazz, and also covers jazz crossover, including jazz-funk, jazz hip-h ...

Songlines A songline, also called dreaming track, is one of the paths across the land (or sometimes the sky) within the animist belief systems of the Aboriginal cultures of Australia which mark the route followed by localised "creator-beings" in the Dre ...

FRoots ''fRoots'' (pronounced "eff-Roots", originally ''Folk Roots'') was a specialist music magazine published in the UK between 1979 and 2019. It specialised in folk and world music, and featured regular compilation downloadable albums, with occas ...

Time Out Time-out, Time Out, or timeout may refer to: Time * Time-out (sport), in various sports, a break in play, called by a team * Television timeout, a break in sporting action so that a commercial break may be taken * Timeout (computing), an enginee ...

and

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...

. The album has been played internationally, including

BBC Radio 3 BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, Radio drama, drama, High culture, culture and the arts ...

KEXP-FM KEXP-FM (90.3 MHz) is a non-commercial radio station licensed to Seattle, Washington, United States, specializing in alternative and indie rock programmed by its disc jockeys for the Seattle metropolitan area. The station is owned by the non-pr ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

, USA. Having toured extensively around the UK, TG Collective have appeared several times at the

Cheltenham Jazz Festival Cheltenham Jazz Festival is one of the UK's leading jazz festivals, and is part of Cheltenham Festivals' annual festival season, also including the Science, Music and Literature Festivals in Cheltenham Spa. Introduction and history The Chelt ...

; Kings Place, London; live on

BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, p ...

television; Jamie Oliver's Big Feastival; the

Manchester Jazz Festival {{Use dmy dates, date=April 2022 Manchester Jazz Festival is an annual 9-day-long festival focused on showcasing contemporary jazz from the North West of England and beyond. mjf 2017 The 2017 Manchester Jazz Festival took place from 28 July to 6 ...

; a live session for Jazz FM and London's

Pizza Express PizzaExpress is a British multinational restaurant group, owned by a group of bondholders. It has over 470 restaurants across the United Kingdom and 100 overseas in Europe, Hong Kong, China, India, Indonesia, Kuwait, the Philippines, the Unite ...

Jazz Club in Soho, in addition to touring in Ireland, France, Spain, Serbia and Bulgaria.

Members

*Jamie Fekete (

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

s) *Sam Slater (

oud , image=File:oud2.jpg , image_capt=Syrian oud made by Abdo Nahat in 1921 , background= , classification= * String instruments *Necked bowl lutes , hornbostel_sachs=321.321-6 , hornbostel_sachs_desc=Composite chordophone sounded with a plectrum , ...

) *Percy Pursglove (

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...

) *Holly Jones (

, alto flute) *Lluis Mather (

clarinet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...

bass clarinet The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B), but it plays notes an octave bel ...

) *Kit Massey (

) *Joelle Barker ( cajon,

riq Daf ( fa, دف) also known as Dâyere and Riq is a Middle Eastern (mainly Iranian) frame drum musical instrument, used in popular and classical music in South and Central Asia. It is also used in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Iran, Uzbe ...

, percussion)

Trio Gitano 2001–2006

The UK based acoustic guitar trio Trio Gitano was formed in 2001 by three 'graduate' members of the Birmingham School's Guitar Ensemble - Sam Slater, Jamie Fekete and Sophie Johnson. The Trio was directed by composer, pianist and guitarist Bryan Lester, who still writes for The TG Collective. After performing together throughout their time together at The University of Birmingham, the Trio signed to The Birds Recording Company

indie Indie is a short form of "independence" or "independent"; it may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Gaming *Independent video game development, video games created without financial backing from large companies *Indie game, any game (board ...

label in 2004 to release their debut album - ''Who Ate All The Tapas?'' in August 2005, and was voted as one of the Records of the Year by ''

''. The album also received notable reviews in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'', ''Jazzwise'' Magazine, ''Songlines'' Magazine, ''The Metro'' and coverage on BBC Radios 3 and 4. During the summer of 2006, Sophie Johnson left the Trio, with multi-instrumentalist Percy Pursglove joining the group, adding new dynamic drive and direction on

, which paved the way for the formation and basis of the TG Collective in September 2006. Pursglove had previously studied Jazz at Birmingham Conservatoire and The New School in New York.

Associated acts

* Percy Pursglove * Joelle Barker * Kit Massey * Lluis Mather * Sam Slater * The Destroyers *

Katy Carr Katy Carr is a British singer-songwriter and musician known for her songs about Polish history. A fan of the 1930s and 1940s, she plays vintage instruments and wears clothing and hairstyles from the period. Although she was born in England, sh ...

Awards

*''Who Ate All The Tapas?'' was No.4 in the Sunday Times' Records of the Year in 2005

Discography

* ''Who Ate All the Tapas?'' Trio Gitano (Birds, 2005) * ''Release the Penguins'' (Stoney Lane, 2012)

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tg Collective English jazz ensembles Flamenco groups English classical music groups Musical groups from Birmingham, West Midlands British world music groups