About Jill Grant

Jill began singing very early in life - her parents told her she was singing melody lines before she could speak. At seven she discovered jazz when she heard Count Basie’s “One O'clock Jump”. “It jumped out and grabbed me,” she said. From that moment on, she was hooked.

Jill listened to anything and everything all through her childhood and teens - from Jelly Roll Morton to Ornette Coleman, and while at art college she began singing in jazz clubs in Birmingham where she was a student. Since then she has formed her own trio and quartet. Her regular musicians include Alan Berry and Richard Madgwick (piano), Ernie Cranenburgh (guitar), Dave Quincy and Stan Robinson (saxophones) and Mick Durell (bass). She has worked at the Watermill, Dorking, the Rutland Arms, Catford, the 100 Club, Shepherd's Restaurant, Belgravia, regularly at the Green, East Dulwich, the Mandeville Hotel, Marylebone, the Forester's Arms, Forest Hill, the Park Lane Hotel, Piccadilly the Medway Jazz Festival, the Wyndham Grand Hotel, Chelsea Harbour, HMS Belfast and regularly at Pissarro’s, Hastings.

Musicians she has worked with recently include Dave Cliff, Janusz Carmello, Jack Honeybourne, Ian Scott-Taylor,  Rodney Mendoza, John Burch, Simon Woolf, Kenny Shaw, Jim Richardson, George Oag, Roger Curphy, Roland Lacey, Geoff Castle,  Mike Cotton and the Jazz Blues Mothers (see links page for more about the Jazz Blues Mothers). She has recorded her debut CD "Who Needs Spring?" This has been most favourably reviewed by jazz critic Alun Morgan, and played on Jazz FM.