Michael Garrick

Michael Garrick, M.B.E. (1933-2011) was an English jazz pianist and composer, and a pioneer of poetry and jazz concerts.

Garrick was born on 30th May 1933 in Enfield, Middlesex, and educated at University College, London (U.C.L.), from which he graduated in 1959 with a B.A. in English literature. As a student there he formed his first quartet. Aside from some lessons at the Ivor Mairants School of Dance Music he was an entirely self-taught musician (he had been expelled from Eleanor B. Franklin-Pike's piano lessons for quoting from "In the Mood" at a pupils' concert), though he attended Berklee College, Boston, as a mature student in the 1970s.