Gwilym Simcock

Meet the man on track to become "the greatest pianist this country has ever produced."

The name Gwilym Simcock has been on everyone's lips on the UK jazz scene over the last few years. The jazz and classical influenced pianist emerged from a spectacular time at music college, after which he was soon playing with the likes of Kenny Wheeler and Dave Holland, attaining a reputation for himself as an extraordinary new talent, making him the most talked about pianist in the UK since the early days of Django Bates.

Gwilym says the experience of making his first solo album is scary. At 26, he is, by common consent, a major star in the making and the most talked about young musician in British jazz for decades. In a relatively short space of time he has earned the admiration of both fans and fellow musicians alike. When he appeared on Spike Wells' recent album Reverence, the veteran drummer, who knows a thing or two about pianists, said he thought Simcock was on track to become the greatest pianist this country has ever produced.

Praise indeed, but Simcock takes it all in his stride. He's well aware he's a work in progress, albeit in fast, upward ascent on the learning curve, absorbing knowledge and experience as he reaches towards his own individual voice. It's a bit like making a stew, he says. Put all these ingredients and seasonings together and eventually it will come out as your stew, which will be slightly different to somebody else's stew because it's got that slightly different ratio of ingredients. You just try and be as individual as possible and you just have to work at it and hope what eventually comes out is yourself.

After winning BBC, Perrier, British Jazz and Parliamentary jazz awards, recognition as the first ever BBC Radio 3 New Generations Jazz Artist and countless rave reviews of his live performances, he acknowledges that the time had come for him to finally define himself as an artist with his own recording.

In a way I've put it off and put it off and put it off, he says. I've been so busy working it never really quite felt like the right time to do a recording of my own because you always feel a bit nervous about putting something out that you might feel won't be relevant for a long enough period of time. The great thing about being a jazz musician is that you're always improving, or always changing. When you do your first album you want it to be something that everyone's going to say, Oh, my God! But at the end of the day all you can do is where you've got to at a given point, and I guess I'm just about ready to accept that that's the case.

Stuart Nicholson