Mike returns to the EFG London Jazz Festival for this special Vortex two-nighter to celebrate his 85th birthday year, with the Trinity Laban Jazz Orchestra conducted by Mike Gibbs & Josephine Davies

Brit-jazz composer and arranger Michael Gibbs was born in 1937 in Zimbabwe. Starting in 1959, he studied in Boston at the Berklee College of Music, the Boston Conservatory, Tanglewood and the Lenox School of Music, where he studied with a who is who of contemporary jazz and modern composition: George Russell, Gunther Schuller, Iannis Xenakis, Aaron Copland, J.J Johnson and others.

In 1964 he moved to the UK, where he engaged himself in the rapidly emerging contemporary UK jazz scene. He has worked as a free-lance composer, doing arrangements and orchestrations for major names such as Joni Mitchell, Pat Metheny, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Peter Gabriel among many others, while recording and touring his own music featuring artists such Gary Burton, Bill Frisell, Steve Swallow, Kenny Wheeler, Mike Brecker, John Scofield, and Norma Winston.