John Crockford

An instrumentalist, vocalist and sometime music director, since he was small he has played the violin and piano, sang and tried to work out how to connect up audio stuff to make it sound louder and better... Since then he has carried on making lots of noise in different ways around London and elsewhere in the world, from Bognor to Birmingham, Johannesburg to Porto. Musically quite restless, he enjoyed studying African and Asian music with renowned local artists like Claud Deppa and Yousuf Ali Khan, whilst running a Recycled Junk Orchestra project for many years. Projects have included playing countless weddings as organist to directing orchestral versions of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells.
Having completed a music degree at the University of Birmingham he went on to play and
MD shows and events, but found teaching in the Black Country and then West London to be the best career path for someone whose C90 tapes had Rachmaninov on one side and Public Enemy on the other. Having learnt how to wield a razor blade and sticky tape in editing music in early ProTools, he now has a much more productive - and safer - home studio he shares with his Drum n Bass producing son.
When not arranging vocal music for children’s theatre and acapella group Vocal Shack, he is to be found collaborating with East London producers and artists. As a music teacher for many years in both secondarys and sixth forms he is excited to follow the careers of his former students who range from members of NSG to Dua Lipa’s backing singer and Jazz chart topping Alfa Mist.