Alex Wilson

There are two artists with this name. 1. Alex Wilson is a Blues guitarist who picked up the guitar at five years old and never put it down. Immersed in the Milwaukee blues scene, Alex was surrounded, and influenced by such local luminaries as Stokes, Lee Gates, Jim Liban and Milwaukee Slim. Alex formed his own garage band at thirteen. By seventeen he began to dig deep into the blues, learning the songs and styles of masters such as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Buddy Guy, Jimi Hendrix and Magic Sam. At seventeen Alex began playing professionally and by twenty-one he had joined Milwaukee's Blue Rubies and was performing regionally while still playing part-time with his own band. Playing up to 25 gigs a month, Wilson honed and sharpened his skills as a singer/songwriter, guitar player and over all entertainer. 2. Alex Wilson is a UK born pianist/composer/arranger/producer/educator was raised in Sierra Leone, UK, Austria and Switzerland. After gaining a degree in Electronics from the University of York, Alex embarked on a professional career as a pianist, performing and recording with Courtney Pine, Jazz Jamaica, Sandra Cross, Adalberto Santiago and Jocelyn Brown. Gigs with Snowboy and piano lessons with Conal Fawkes, pianist with Roberto Pla, got him onto the salsa scene and by 1996, he had become one of the most in-demand keyboard players on both the London Jazz and Latin scenes. Alex was signed to the Candid label and his debut solo album, Afro-Saxon, was released in 1997. The follow-up, Anglo-Cubano in 1999, found him travelling to Cuba to record and received rave reviews from both Jazz and World music critics. Alex's third album on Candid, R & B Latino found the young Latin-jazz pianist with a handful of London's top r&b vocalists (Jocelyn Brown, Mary Pearce, Noel McKoy, Lauren Dalrymple) and the production skills of Craig David's musical director, Frank Tontoh. 'R&B LATINO' fuses two most exciting dance beats in contemporary music into a unique and dynamic new sound. Alex now has five solo albums out in a Latin jazz and salsa vein and continues a diverse career which currently includes a commission from the Royal Opera House, composing for theatre productions, producing Latin hip hop, running his 12-piece salsa band, work as a session keyboard player and education work in music colleges. He traveled to forty five countries to perform music in a multitude of projects. As a composer his track record spans commissions from the Royal Opera House to producing Latin hip hop and reggaeton for film and TV. Alex is also a committed music educator, having delivered workshops and master-classes for young people both internationally, for The British Council in Colombia, Cuba, Jordan and Israel, as well as here in the UK for music colleges, such as the British Academy of New Music, The Royal College of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Nottingham University. His work in schools has provided workshops and summer schools for Education Action Zone and 'Gifted and Talented' schemes. Alex was also a key member of the series of workshops based around the Commonwealth produced by Serious for young people around the UK in 2002. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.