Milton Keynes is a city in Buckinghamshire, England, about 50 miles (80 km) north-west of London. At the 2021 Census, the population of its urban area was 264,349. The River Great Ouse forms the northern boundary of the urban area; a tributary, the River Ouzel, meanders through its linear parks and balancing lakes. Approximately 25% of the urban area is parkland or woodland and includes two Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs).
Wavendon is a village and civil parish in the south east of the Milton Keynes urban area, in Buckinghamshire, England.
Dame Cleo Laine, Lady Dankworth is an English singer and actress known for her scat singing. She is the widow of jazz composer and musician Sir John Dankworth and the mother of bassist Alec Dankworth and singer Jacqui Dankworth.
Sir John Phillip William Dankworth, CBE, also known as Johnny Dankworth, was an English jazz composer, saxophonist, clarinettist and writer of film scores. With his wife, jazz singer Dame Cleo Laine, he was a music educator and also her music director.
Allan Anthony Ganley was an English jazz drummer and arranger.
James Charles Marshall known as The Father of Loud or The Lord of Loud, was an English businessman and pioneer of guitar amplification. His company, Marshall Amplification, founded in 1962, has created equipment that is used by some of the biggest names in rock music, producing amplifiers with an iconic status.
Alexander William Tamba Dankworth is an English jazz bassist and composer.
The Shakespeare in Washington Festival was a cultural festival held in Washington, D.C. from January through June 2007 in honor of the works of William Shakespeare.
Alisha Sufit was the English singer-songwriter with the 1970s Magic Carpet, whose eponymous first album was released on the UK Mushroom label in 1972. The Mushroom label is not to be confused with the Australian label of the same name, and was led by Vic Keary from the late 1960s from Chalk Farm Studios in Belmont Street, London.
The Coade Hall is a brick-built theatre and concert hall at Bryanston School, near Blandford Forum in Dorset, England.
Joanna Eden is an English jazz singer, songwriter and pianist.
Cantabile - The London Quartet is a British a cappella vocal quartet.
Malcolm Edmonstone is a British jazz pianist and pop arranger. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he became Head of Jazz. Edmonstone provided orchestral arrangements for Gary Barlow’s 2020 album Music Played by Humans. He has conducted and arranged for the BBC Concert Orchestra numerous times for BBC Radio 2, featuring vocalists Rick Astley, Katie Melua, Mark King, Ruby Turner, Tommy Blaize, Tony Momrelle and Heather Small. In 2020 he was Music Director at the National Theatre for Tony Kushner’s adaptation of The Visit (play). In 2016 he made his BBC Proms debut, arranging and conducting for Iain Ballamy and Liane Carroll.
Jacqueline Caryl Dankworth is a British jazz singer. She is the daughter of jazz singer Cleo Laine and musician John Dankworth.
Simon Richard Spillett is a British jazz tenor saxophonist. He has won the BBC Jazz Awards Rising Star (2007), Jazz Journal's Critics' Choice album of the Year (2009), the British Jazz Awards Top Tenor Saxophonist (2011), and Services to British Jazz award (2016).
Jazz 625 is a BBC jazz programme featuring performances by British and American musicians, first broadcast between April 1964 and August 1966. It was created by Terry Henebery, a clarinetist recruited in 1963 as one of the new producers for BBC Two.
Frank Holder was a Guyanese jazz singer and percussionist. He was a member of bands led by Jiver Hutchinson, Johnny Dankworth and Joe Harriott.
The National Jazz Archive is a collection of materials pertaining to jazz and blues that is kept at the Loughton Library in Essex, England. The archive was founded by British trumpeter Digby Fairweather in 1998 and contains visual and print materials from the 1920s to the present.
Dame Ann Geraldine Limb is a British educationalist, business leader, charity chair and philanthropist. In September 2015, she became the first woman Chair of The Scout Association since the organization was founded by Robert Baden Powell in 1907. Limb also served, in 2023-24, as the 789th High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, the first Quaker to hold this office.
Avril Margaret Dankworth was an English music educator who established the week-long summer Avril Dankworth Children's Music Camps for children aged between 7 and 17 in Wavendon, near Milton Keynes, in mid-1970. She also sang, taught music, authored multiple books and helped introduce the idiom in school music curriculum.
