Andrew London Trio Featuring Neil Billington

Wellington harmonica player Neil Billington will guest with the Andrew London Trio at the Kapiti Playhouse on Saturday 1st June.

Billington has travelled and recorded extensively with London's 'Hot Club Sandwich' trio over the last 25 years, featuring on most of their eight albums and a live DVD, and performing at jazz, folk and arts festivals in Australia, Norfolk Island and Saudi Arabia.

London says’ I love playing with Neil - he can light a room up and do things on the humble little harmonica it was never designed to do. I’ve had people tell me they were afraid he was going to swallow it. Very few musicians play with the complete abandon and passion that Neil injects into every gig. He just lives for the stage and that little instrument’.

Billington is not only one of NZ's most proficient blues harmonica players, heavily influenced by American artists like Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson and Muddy Waters; but is also adept on the larger and much less common chromatic harmonica popularised by Larry Adler, Max Geldray of Goon Show fame and Dutch jazz player Toots Thielemans.

Billington says he is looking forward to the Kapiti Playhouse gig. 'I enjoy the challenge of playing with Andrew and Kirsten - in a half-hour set we can veer from a sophisticated Hoagy Carmichael jazz standard to a low-down Mississippi blues, then to a poignant country ballad or a thumping rock’n’roll song. Andrew loves to keep me guessing and trying to catch me out. It's great exercise and we always have a ball.’

The line up is:
Andrew London: guitar & vocal
Kirsten London: bass and vocal
Neil Billington: harmonica and vocal