Phil Minton

by Joslyn Layne Avant-garde vocalist Phil Minton has a large vocabulary of voices and extended vocal techniques and an extensive discography cataloguing his numerous projects from 1969 on. Born near the Southern coast of England in 1940, he started out on the trumpet and began playing in jazz bands in the late '50s. After moving to London in the mid-'60s, Minton began doubling as trumpeter/vocalist for the Mike Westbrook Orchestra, then lived in the Canary Islands for a year, and in Sweden for five before returning to London (and Westbrook's band) in the early '70s. The mid-'70s found him working in a variety of settings, from improvised duos to theatre groups, and in his vocal trio Voice with Julie Tippetts and Maggie Nicols. As an improviser, Minton has toured throughout the world, working with a great many creative musicians, including Peter Brötzmann, Fred Frith, John Butcher, Derek Bailey's Company, and an ongoing collaboration with Veryan Weston. In addition to Voice, he was in another trio during the '90s called Axon (with Marcio Mattos & Martin Blume, which recorded for another collaborator Georg Graewe's label Random Acoustics), led the Phil Minton Quartet, and was a member of the quartet Roof.