ABOUT

Max is an exciting multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger and educator. Highly active as a trombonist, he has recently performed with world-renowned artists Nikki Iles, Trish Clowes, Gareth Lockrane, Will Vinsen, Liam Noble and Bill Laurance. His accolades include reaching the semi-final of the BBC Young Jazz Musician in 2016 and 2018, the classical brass semi-final in 2016, and winning the Reinstein jazz award at Cambridge University in 2018. Skilled as both a soloist and big band section player, Max was lead trombone in the Cambridge University Jazz Orchestra (CUJO, 2017-2020), where he was musical director, and the Royal Academy of Music Big Band (2020-2022). Whilst with CUJO, Max collaborated with Yazz Ahmed, Mads Mathias, Trish Clowes and BBC Big Band director Barry Forgie. His arrangements for the band have been sold internationally.

Aside from jazz, Max is also an accomplished and versatile classical musician. In 2016 he performed Albrechtsburger’s Alto Trombone Concerto in York Minster and in the same year toured the Czech Republic as a cello soloist with the City of Leeds Youth Orchestra. In 2017-2018 Max held the principal trombone chair with the Cambridge University Orchestra where he performed with world-class conductors including Sir Mark Elder, Tom Poster and Jac van Steen. Max’s music making also encompasses a wide range of other genres including gospel, soul, pop and CCM. 

Max graduated with a first-class degree in Music from the University of Cambridge in 2020 which included dissertations on the sacred works of Mary Lou Williams and Wynton Marsalis’ oratorio Blood on the Fields and a source studies project analysing the use of notation by big band composers Kenny Wheeler and Charles Mingus.