Biography

A talented and innovative pianist and singer from Toronto, Canada, Jacqueline Kroft has performed extensively in Europe and America and is now recording in the UK.

Jacqueline Kroft was born in Liverpool, England. Her family moved to Malaysia when she was two and then after stopping back in England a couple of years later, went to Canada. Her mother was a dressmaker who studied opera and sang Gershwin and Pucinshe in the kitchen, her father was and still is an inventor.

At the age of ten she started playing the piano with John Chester, a Polish Concert Pianist at the Conservatory. He was the friend of her mother’s opera teacher. After high school, she attended an experimental art school for two years on Vancouver Island, Britsh Columbia, now called Victoria Art College. There were seven students and seven teachers. Here she studied drawing, painting, sculpture, dance, literature, photography and a general overview of the creative self.

In the summer of her first year of College she did a study on the Orcinius Orca ( Killer Whale ) with a group of young explorers, ( Erich Hoyt, Bruce Bott and Jim and Muffin O’Donnell ). They sailed up the west coast of Canada to the Queen Charlotte Straight and in kayaks and canoes photographed, filmed and recorded a pod of Orcinius. Their main objective was communication through sound with synths and hydraphones.

After completing her art course, she returned to Toronto to be with her family and opened up her painting studio in an old warehouse at the bottom of King and Jarvis. She started helping some friends of hers ( the Cole family) in their jazz club Basin Street, to raise money for paints and basic survival. It was here that she met jazz musicians like Stan Getz, Bill Evans, Jerry Mulligan and Chet Baker. Listening to them every night and getting to know them had a strong impact on her life.

Co-incidentally during this time, her mother gave me the piano she had played as a child and she started to play again. She returned to the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and studied piano and voice. Also studying improvisational jazz with Bobby Fenton and Fred Stone ( Freddy Hubbard Band ).

She got her first job as a pianist at the Flamingo Comedy Cabaret. Soon after this she was fully booked in clubs in Toronto. An agent from Germany booked me in Frankfurt which began a long tour of Europe. She stayed in Europe recording demos and co-writing with different artists for Sony and Warner Bros and performing extensively throughout the Continent.

She moved to London and recorded her first album “Mermaids live Inside”. Great musicians rallied around to record with me like Andy Partridge from XTC, Mo Foster from the Jeff Beck Band, Vic Coppersmith Heaven who produced The Jam and Neville Farmer. Geoffrey Burgon did a string arrangement for Sidcup Girl. Mermaids can be bought on her Website [www.jacquelinekroft.com] and appointed record shops. She married Geoffrey Burgon and had their son, Daniel Milo.

her second album ” pianowife ” recorded at Yellow Shark studios in Cheltenham is to be released in the spring of 2005. Pianowife, theme song from this album is being used as the title music for an interview TV series in Canada called ” In the Mind of ” transmitting now on Biography Channel 140. Some of the songs from pianowife are in electronica and are being used on television series “riders and rich kids ” ITV1, and ” the race ” ITV2. ( available on Collection of Tronic ) She has written the lyrics the theme music for the Fortsyte Saga ” Irene’s Song ” of which the Welsh opera star, Bryn Terfel has sung and ” June’s Song ” sung by Sisel.