To celebrate Oriel’s 700th anniversary, Oriel Fellow and Director of Music David Maw has organised a series of concerts featuring our past Visiting Fellows in Music.
Internationally acclaimed jazz pianist Gwilym Simcock will be joined by leading trumpeter Nick Smart who received a 2026 Grammy nomination as producer, conductor, and soloist for the album Kenny Wheeler Legacy – Some Days Are Better which was made at the Royal Academy of Music where he is head of jazz. Together they will play music by Gwilym Simcock and Kenny Wheeler.
College members can book complimentary tickets by emailing the Music at Oxford box office directly: info@musicatoxford.com
Simcock moves effortlessly between jazz and classical music, with a ‘harmonic sophistication and subtle dovetailing of musical traditions’.
Gwilym has been hailed as a pianist of ‘exceptional’, ‘brilliant’ and ‘dazzling’ ability, and his music has been widely acclaimed as ‘engaging, exciting, often unexpected, melodically enthralling, complex yet hugely accessible’, and above all ‘wonderfully optimistic’.
Gwilym’s influences are wide ranging, from jazz legends including Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Jaco Pastorius and Pat Metheny, to classical composers including Maurice Ravel, Henri Dutilleux, Béla Bartók and Mark-Anthony Turnage.
Although principally a jazz artist, Gwilym has composed numerous works for larger Classical ensemble that combine through-composed elements with improvisation, creating a sound that is distinctive and very much his own.
Head of Jazz Programmes at the Royal Academy of Music, Smart is an internationally renowned Grammy nominated jazz trumpeter, conductor and educator who has given guest masterclasses and performances around the world.
In 2013 he was awarded the Parliamentary Jazz Award for Jazz Education, in 2015 awarded Honorary Membership of the Royal Academy of Music, and in 2022 conferred with Professorship from the University of London.
At home he is recognised as one of the leading musicians on the UK jazz scene, where as well as being in regular demand as a sideman to players of all generations, he continues to record and tour with his own projects.