MUSICIAN

Buster Birch is an award-winning drummer from London who has worked with many of the UK’s finest jazz musicians. He has an honours degree in music from the University of London and a post-graduate diploma in jazz performance from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He also studied at the Drummers Collective in New York City and privately with Jim Chapin and Joe Morello (of The Dave Brubeck Quartet). He has performed at virtually every major concert hall and jazz club in London as well as major international festivals, toured in over 30 countries and recorded nearly 40 CDs. He has been a member of three “world” music groups (Terza Rima, The Branco Stoysin Trio and Heads South) who he recorded and toured with extensively. He has played for The Royal Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra and The Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra and deputised on West End shows including the long-running "Blood Brothers". He is a project artist for La Folia (www.lafoliamusic.org) a music charity that brings together professional musicians, singers, actors, dancers, visual artists and writers to create new music, original projects and ground-breaking performances with vulnerable members of society. He created his own critically acclaimed show www.busterplaysbuster.com which features the Buster Birch jazz quartet playing live to the screening of different classic Buster Keaton silent movies, for which he has arranged and scored over 4hrs of music to sync. In 2023 Buster plays Buster won the Audience Award at The Chichester International Film Festival, a major UK film festival featuring 110 screenings over 22 days. Current bands he can be heard playing with include ARQ (The Alison Rayner Quintet) - winners of the Parliamentary Jazz Award for "UK Best Jazz Ensemble"and the British Jazz Award public vote for "Best Small Group", The Jo Fooks Quartet, Heads South, The London Jazz Trio and The Halstead Jazz Club Big Band. 

 

JAZZ EDUCATOR

Buster Birch was a professorial member of the jazz faculty at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music for seven years where he taught improvisation, musicianship, jazz repertoire and jazz history classes. He has lectured at The Royal Academy of Music, The Guildhall School of Music & Drama and Middlesex University. He is director of the UK’s largest and longest-running jazz summer school www.theoriginalukjazzsummerschool.com, winner of the 2021 Parliamentary award for Jazz Education. It is a week-long residential course hosted at The Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama for singers and instrumentalists of all ages and experience levels. He is the co-founder and director of BYMT Jazz School (www.bymt.co.uk) which runs regular jazz improvisation classes for junior and secondary school children at Bromley Music Hub. In 2017 BYMT Jazz School won the prestigious Will Michael Diploma Award for Jazz Education, a national award recognising “outstanding commitment to jazz education” and “acknowledging the work of those field practitioners who are actually delivering jazz education and in many cases helping to combat the widespread jazz phobia among classroom music teachers and instrumental tutors.”  He has also taught over 150 jazz workshops to adult learners and is often invited to teach as a guest at other jazz workshops up and down the country. During lock-down he started his online jazz education business (www.learntoplayjazz.co.uk) featuring live zoom classes and video lessons covering classic jazz repertoire and essential musicianship skills. There is now over 70hrs of premium content available for subscription, plus loads of free resources through his mailing list and he has hundreds of adult students signed up from around the world. He has published 25 books on jazz improvisation and musicianship skills. 

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AUTHOR

Buster Birch began his author career in 2018, when he set up Savvy Interactive Music Publishing to publish his own interactive music tuition books. By 2019 he had published 17 books worldwide on the Apple Books store. They are written for all instruments and feature play-along exercises with audio files embedded directly in the books, making the experience more like using an app than a book. In 2019 Buster received a publishing contract from Fundamental Changes, one of the UK's biggest music publishers, and started writing a new series of jazz improvisation books for woodwind and brass instruments. "Beginner Jazz Soloing" for trumpet, flute, violin, saxophone & clarinet are available worldwide in print from Amazon and for download on Kindle. These books have received hundreds of 5 star customer reviews and have been translated for international audiences. In 2021 he published his follow up series "Rhythm Changes Soloing" for trumpet, saxophone, clarinet, flute and all concert pitch instruments. In 2022 he published his first drumming tutorial "The Art of Comping for Jazz Drums" which was followed by "Odd Time Drum Groove Mastery" in 2024.  

 

PROMOTER AND BROADCASTER

For many years he produced, promoted and performed local concerts featuring some of the UK's finest jazz musicians as guest artists. Under the guise of Halstead Jazz Club he promoted 100 gigs and then some years later set up Orpington Jazz Club, which was in its third year as covid and lockdown struck. After a few months he was missing the music, the musicians and audience, so in May 2020 started "Orpington Virtual Jazz Club" which was a weekly online event showcasing the musicians he had previously booked for the club. After 13 episodes (some of which are still available online) in September 2020 he rebranded and relaunched the show as "Buster's Virtual Jazz Club" live streaming every Friday night on YouTube through to July 2021, producing 45 x 1.5hr episodes. The show features some of the UK's best jazz musicians as he interviewed them live, played their recordings, discussed their approach to music and showcased the breadth of their work. His aim is to inform, educate and entertain his growing audience around the world. Every past episode is available to watch for free at www.busterbirch.co.uk/virtualjazzclub

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