Mike Flynn - Biography

Born in London in 1972, via-Stroud, Oxford, Brighton and now living in Brixton, Mike initially studied Fine Art Printmaking at Falmouth College Of Art (graduating with a 2:1 BA Hons Degree), but subsiquently followed a career as both a musician and music journalist. Playing bass guitar for 24 years he's mainly self-taught though he has studied privately with great bass players Mike Mondesir, Steve Lawson, John Goldsby, and Rob Statham. All this has helped him play music from across the spectrum of styles; from full-on rock bands to piano jazz trios, even a little classical opera group. Playing countless live gigs and numerous recording sessions, has made him a very versatile bassist.

Mike has played with some amazing musical talent that includes live performances with members of Oxford dance band legends The Egg (playing live on MTV and Channel 5), opera singer Heather Cairncross, jazz musicians Soweto Kinch, Robert Mitchell, Tom Pilling, Roy Dodds, Robin Banerjee (Amy Winehouse), Lauren Dalrymple (Jazz Warriors), Mamadee Kamara (Courtney Pine, Andy Sheppard) Dylan Howe, Shannon Harris (Wheatus, Lilly Allen), Ben Sarfas (Lou Rhodes). Mike also perfomed a week of concerts with London funk band Jasco at the 2005 Koh Samui Music Festival in Thailand on the bill with bands Da Lata, Laurence Cottle's Big Band, UB40 and Jerry Lee Lewis. In June 2009 he performed at the Jazz au Chellah festival in Rabat, Morocco in a quartet Paula Rae Gibson, Sophie Alloway and Tom Pilling.

More recently Mike has performed with top London-based funk band Groove Digger, and is a longstanding member of cutting edge London Rai rock/funk band Ludomix, Most recently he's recorded a new album with beguiling singer/photographer Paula Rae Gibson that is set for a release soon. He's begun work on a new solo bass-led project that will span jazz, funk and left field dance music and feature many of the fine musicians he knows and works with in and around London. Mike is also now working with amazing Indian solo artist and music producer Niraj Chag - for a debut performance of his new band at the LSO St Luke's on October 24th in London.

Mike has also carved out a successful career as a music journalist and writes regular features and reviews as the Jazz Editor at Time Out magazine London, Jazzwise Magazine and Bass Guitar Magazine. He was been chosen to be one of the judges for the 2008 and 2009 ‘Mercury Music Prize‘. Mike was also asked by top UK live music producers Serious to run several workshops for young musicians and writers during the 2008 London Jazz Festival as part of both their Jazz Alive and Write Stuff Learning Program projects. He's also hosted several masterclass/workshops with Andy Sheppard (at the 2008 London Jazz Festival), Joshua Redman and Christian McBride (the last two at the Guildhall School of Music). Mike was also nominated for a Parliamentary Jazz Award for Jazz Journalist Of The Year 2009 by the All Parliamentary Jazz Appreciation Society- which is voted for by musicians and jazz industry professionals.

He also has ten years experience working with music websites as a journalist, website manager, design consultant and project manager. First working for one of the UK’s first big dotcom music retail sites Audiostreet (part of Streetsonline) in 1999, he has since gone on to work for the official Glastonbury website since 2000, web hosting and design consultancy Qmediasream (whose clients include lowcarbonaccelerator, GVEP, Ecademy, Upstream, Accountability). He’s also worked closely with several leading musicians to produce websites for them these include leading American jazz composer Vince Mendoza, acclaimed Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer , the late great trumpter and humourist Humphrey Lyttelton's official website and top UK session bassist (and Jools Holland’s bassist for over 15 years) Dave Swift. Mike currently manages two websites for Universal music UK – classicsndjazz.co.uk and ijazz.org – as well as Universal’s international label’s website emarcy.com. He also manages Jazzwise magazine’s website that he recently redesigned with help from designer Alison Merriman.