CHRIS WALKER - Has been playing the clarinet since the age of 15. After school he played regularly around the London jazz scene – then became a professional musician with the London City Stompers and with the Mike Daniels Big Band and Colin Kingwell’s Jazz Bandits. After moving to Hampshire he worked with most of the local jazz personalities, and has run his own highly successful 5-piece “Swingtet” for the last 21 years. In 1987 he was musical director for an historic BBC “Songs of Praise” from The Maltings in Farnham and between 1980 and 2019 has produced a series of music and information based jazz programmes for BBC Local radio all across the South. These days he runs The Pedigree Jazzband and tour show titled “A Salute to Trad Jazz”.

His talk entitled “The Great American Christmas” traces a fond look back how the Great American Songbook treated Christmas over the years with stories and rare Audio/video examples from his own collection.