Artists | Phil Minton (UK)

Phil Minton (born 1940 in Torquay, UK) is a British vocalist and trumpeter.

He played trumpet and sang with the Mike Westbrook Band in the early 60s. Then in dance and rock bands in Europe for the later of part of the decade. He returned to England in 1971, rejoining Westbrook and was involved in many of his projects until the mid 1980’s.

He has sung lyrics by William Blake with Mike Westbrook, Daniil Kharms and Joseph Brodsky with Simon Nabatov, and extracts from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake with his own ensemble. Between 1987 and 1993 Minton toured Europe, North America and Russia with Lindsay Cooper’s Oh, Moscow.

Minton’s most frequent improvising companions are the pianist Veryan Weston and the drummer Roger Turner, but for most of the last forty years, Minton has been working as a improvising singer with most of the improvising musicians in the European scene in lots of groups, orchestras, and situations, all over the place.
Numerous composers have written music especially for his extended vocal techniques. He has a quartet with Veryan Weston, Roger Turner and John Butcher, and ongoing duos, trios and quartets with above and many other musicians.

Since the 1980s, his Feral Choir Köln, where he voice-conducts workshops and concerts for anyone who wants to sing, has performed in over twenty countries.