About Chris

Chris was born in 1939 and took up playing clarinet at the age of 15, having been a member of the school recorder band since he was 11. After leaving school he played regularly around the London jazz scene, as a member of The Freddy Shaw Jazzmen, before becoming a professional musician with The London City Stompers and, later, with the Mike Daniels Big Band and Colin Kingwell’s Jazz Bandits. Chris moved to Hampshire in 1969 and, since then, he has worked with most of the local jazz personalities, was a member of The Real Ale & Thunder Band for 18 years, and has run his own highly successful 5-piece ‘Swingtet’ for the last 30 years. Whilst with the Real Ale & Thunder Band, Chris was, in 1987, the musical director for an historic BBC “Songs of Praise” from The Maltings in Farnham and, between 1980 and 2007; he has produced a series of music and information based jazz programmes for BBC Local radio all across the South.

In addition to managing and fronting ‘The Chris Walker Swingtet’ and The Pedigree Jazz band, Chris has, for Messrs P&O Cruises, co-ordinated Jazz Themes aboard 9 highly appraised cruises on board Canberra and Oriana, Aurora and Artemis. He also acted as jazz advisor to Portsmouth City Council for their Jazz Day every summer on Southsea Sea front, helped set up the original concept for both the Reading and Chichester Real Ale & Jazz Festivals
For over 30 years Chris produced and presented a weekly radio jazz programme. This ran for 27 years on BBC Radio Solent and subsequently on a selection of community radio stations across the world. He also produces and presents a complete jazz diary for the Solent area.

Chris is available for public speaking engagements and has a vast repertoire of audio-visually enhanced talks on the themes of the Great American Songbook – the musicians, composers and singers. If you are interested in booking Chris to speak at your event please contact him.

For further speaker options please see www.diannemannering.co.uk