Band Bios of the Jive Kings ECMA 2001 Jazz Group of the Year

Mike Ross - Lead singer, piano, trumpet Mike is a recent graduate of the UPEI Music Department where he was a trumpet major. Along with being the lead singer of the Jive Kings, Mike is also featured on trumpet and piano. He has appeared with several Island groups over the past three years. Mike has an active side career as a director and performer in dinner theatre productions. He has composed and arranged a number of tunes for the Jive Kings.

Mark Parsons - Lead trumpet and flugelhorn Mark Parsons has rejoined the band after being away for over a year. The group is very excited about having him back on stage. Mark received a Masters degreee in Music from McGill University. He is presently the music teacher at Three Oaks High School in Summerside, PEI and also performs with the PEI Symphony Orchestra.

Bob Nicholson - Bass Trombone and Tuba Bob studied music at UPEI, the University of Toronto, the Royal Conservatory of Music & Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara. He currently performs with the Charlottetown Festival Orchestra, Symphony Nova Scotia, and the Maritime Brass. While spending fours years slugging it out in the orchestra pit of the Phantom of the Opera in Toronto, Bob performed with the Hannaford Street Silver Band, The CBC Toronto Jazz Orchestra, Canadian Opera Company, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Esprit Orchestra, National Ballet of Canada, Elmer Iseler Singers, Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, as well as the orchestra pits of Beauty and the Beast, Showboat, Crazy for You, Miss Saigon and Les Miserables.

Barrie Sorensen - Tenor sax, flute and clarinet Barrie graduated from McGill University in 1993 with a BMus in Jazz Performance. He has also studied privately in New York with jazz great Bob Berg. He has been a very active performer as a member of many bands and ensembles, as well as a freelance artist in the Atlantic Canadian region. He also spent a year and a half working in the show bands on board several of Holland America Line’s cruise ships. Barrie co-produced both Jive Kings recordings, and wrote and arranged much of the material. He has been commissioned in the past to write and arrange many pieces of music in a variety of forms, and continues to be active in this area. He can be contacted at barriesorensen@hotmail.com for more info on his writing and arranging services.

Ian Sherwood - Alto and baritone saxophones Getting his start on the stage of the Grafton Street Theatre in Halifax, Ian has had the pleasure of playing with a number of big bands and small combos on the Halifax and Toronto jazz scenes. His music has even taken him as far away as Dawson City, YT, where he played sax, clarinet and banjo for the Diamond Tooth Gerties Casino show along with performances in the Sourdough Symphony and the Dawson City Music Festival. Originally from Halifax, Ian has called Toronto home for the past two years, and while there, he studied with Juno award winning saxophonist Kirk MacDonald. He is happy, however, to be back in the Maritimes to team up with the Jive Kings.

Perry Williams - Guitar, Banjo and vocals Perry holds a BMusEd from UPEI & MMus from the University of Western Ontario. Perry owns and operates Virtual Studios where the Jive Kings recorded both CDís. Along with recording, editing and mastering the CDís , he worked with Barrie to produce it. A veteran of the PEI music scene, Perry also produces digital media for TV and multimedia. Two Virtual Studios projects won ECMA 2000 Awards: The Jive Kings "Spoon for a Knife" and Rik Barron's " Make Hay When the Sun Shines".

Deryl Gallant - Bass and vocals Deryl is somewhat actively pursuing a seemingly endless degree in Music Education at University of Prince Edward Island. After that ... who knows ... Keep playing the bass for a living, teach high school band, maybe McGill for a Masters in Theory/Composition or perhaps to the Culinary Institute or Compucollege? At the young, yet getting too old to act too young, age of 24, Deryl has played in quite a plethora of musical groups and styles. Some that he thinks are worth noting include the Sonny Caulfield Trio, PEI Symphony, Mystery Snail, UPEI Jazz Band and Wind Symphony, Solstice (with Mike Ross and his best friend Paul Christian), Forever Plaid, member and guest performer on Ninth Hour’s debut CD ‘Creator’, Don Fraser Trio, Colonel Gray Music, Parkdale Elementary School Grade 3 christmas play when he was the 2nd ‘I’ in Icicle and forgot his line..."I is for....ummm...." , CHASE, Singing Strings, Feast Dinner Theatres, and every other musical instance of his life. Oh....and who could forget Swing Set (probably a lot of people)...Deryl and Mike’s first band together that, ironically, didn’t play swing! With that said...there’s nothing like being on stage with the Jive Kings!!

Alan Dowling - Drums and percussion Alan holds a B.A. in Music and a B.Sc. in Mathematics from UPEI and also studied jazz drumming at Boston's Berklee College of Music. A thirty year veteran in the percussion field, Alan has backed up a variety of entertainers ranging from Bobby Curtola to Mae Moore. He's had the pleasure of working with such visiting jazz artists as The Norm and Abby Group from Boston and Ron Petrides of New York's New School University. His many recording credits span such styles as Jazz, Celtic, Funk, Children's music and background TV music for CBC. Alan also drums for the creative jazz/funk group O.S.T. (Shawn Ferris - piano, Chas Guay - bass, Chris Corrigan - guitar) as well as several other groups. He presently keeps busy during the day by teaching information technology at Holland College in Charlottetown.