Legendary British Jazz Pioneer Chris Barber To Play Hugh's Room With Jeff Healey's Jazz Wizards On Friday Aug. 19, 2005

TORONTO, Canada (www.hughsroom.com) - British jazz pioneer Chris Barber will play his first concert in Toronto since the mid-'60s when he joins The Jazz Wizards - featuring guitarist and trumpeter Jeff Healey and singer Terra Hazleton - at Hugh's Room Friday August 19.

Barber has been a leading figure in the British jazz scene since the early '50s - now 75, he is celebrating 51 years of leading his own band, and still plays over 100 concerts a year in Europe and the United Kingdom.

Who: British traditional jazz trombonist and bandleader Chris Barber, playing with The Jazz Wizards, featuring guitarist and trumpeter Jeff Healey and singer Terra Hazleton.
What: Classic traditional jazz.
Where: Hugh's Room, 2261 Dundas St. West, Toronto.
When: Friday, August 19, 8:30 p.m. performance.
Tickets: $32.50 in advance & $36.00 at door, available at
Hugh's Room via internet, www.hughsroom.com or via phone
(416) 531-6604.

Barber, enormously popular and playing the biggest concert halls in Europe, was the first musician to bring Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Louis Jordan, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Alex Bradford Singers, Johnny Hodges and Sonny Terry & Breownie McGhee - among other blues, gospel and jazz legends - to British audiences, thus initiating the British blues scene in the late '50s and early '60s.

With his band's banjo player, the late Lonnie Donegan, he was also responsible for launching the skiffle craze, from which stemmed - along with literally thousands of groups - four lads from Liverpool called The Silver Beatles.

Barber toured the US and Canada during the early '60s; in Toronto he and his band performed at what was then known as the Eaton Auditorium, as well as Massey Hall, but since then he has limited his tours to Europe and the UK. Last year, however, he visited Vancouver and recorded a CD

With more than 60 albums to his credit, including a 1999 release with Van Morrison, Dr. John and Lonnie Donegan, Barber is now leading an 11-piece band, which includes Pat Halcox, who has played trumpet with Barber since the band's earliest days

Barber's Hugh's Room concert comes as the result of an invitation from Jeff Healey to visit Toronto on his vacation - and the involvement of Toronto publicist and promoter Richard Flohil (who first heard the Barber band in 1954), came about when he once again met the bandleader two months ago in Britain.