Peter Fornachon
Peter Fornachon, born 1943, had a few piano lessons as a young child and began playing the guitar at 18 yrs. He is a self-taught musician with no formal qualifications or study.
Influenced by the music of the fifties, he found himself drawn to such jazz giants as Django Reinhardt, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Charlie Christan, Duke Ellington amongst many others. He has played in a number of bands, both large and small, and in several different idioms. In the sixties he dabbled in Traditional Jazz and played in a French rock group, Les Dans, In the seventies he was a founder member of a local jazz club in Havant, UK and played in The Terry Steward Sextet, Blue Tangent, and The Havant Big Band. In 1972 he formed his own band, Jazz Forum which played on and off for many years in South Hampshire, UK. He began composing and arranging at this time. After a spell with the Dixie Docs (trad) in the USA, he then played with The Hursley Swing Band from 1985 until 1996 and continued with a reformed Jazz Forum until 2002. In the mid-nineties after a few years in a Duo, Sounds Right, he began to perform as a solo artist, and concentrated on composing and recording thanks to the continuing advances in technology.
To date he has recorded, in his own home studio, 10 Albums of Jazz standards and 9 albums of his own compositions. To create the recordings all voices, with the exception of the guitars, are individually recorded onto a Roland XP-50 workstation, one at a time. This provides the basic backing tracks (mainly piano, vibes, bass and drums) for melodies and some improvisations. Once the tune has been laid down on the Roland keyboard the whole is then recorded onto a multi-track recorder. Improvisations and guitar are added to the multi-track to complete the recording. Each song as recorded can be performed live as a solo performance, using keyboard and guitar.