At the Chairman’s lunch this year Clapham Old Boy, Tony Minvielle attended for the first time. Since then, I have been made aware of his fascinating and interesting musical career which is just about to take a new path. Today see’s the musical release of ‘Tony Minvielle Presents Into Somethin (Vol. One)’. If you like your music chilled with a Jazz and Soul feel, then do have a listen to this classy collection of well-produced tracks.

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More about Tony

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Tony writes….

It is thanks to Ian Block that I was contacted by Gerry Connor who let me know about the Chairman’s Lunch at the Oval in January 2015.

As far as school is concerned I was in 1 alpha with Toni Jiminez, Brendan Costelloe, Winston Gibbs, Gerry Connor etc. I was the archetypal geeky kid with glasses with his head in a book. I thank Cecil Pocock and the fantastic Mr Gibb (English) for inspiring me to love the spoken and the written word. Good old Bob James tried to get me to play rugby in my first year but after breaking my second pair of glasses my mum put a stop to that.

All during my school years I worked in a record shop up near the Oval so feeding my passion for soul and jazz. I ended up going to Leicester to study where I started DJ'ing and ended working with practically every major band in the 80's - from the Smiths to Frankie goes to Hollywood. When I finished college I ended up in IT where I worked in various parts of the world. Spent 2 years in Atlanta and had a show on a jazz station. During that time I was writing for 'Straight No Chaser' music magazine which was the reason I had for visiting Curtis Mayfield. This was a high point for me, spending two days with Curtis and his family in Atlanta while he gave me the story of his life which in truth helped to redefine mine.

I came back to the UK and was part of Gilles Petersons Worldwide family. In 2002 my wife’s sister died so we adopted her 3 kids to go with the 3 of our own and I took 9 years out from music (for obvious reasons). In 2011 my wife urged me to get back into it - duly bumped into a friend who had the idea for soulandjazz.com so I threw my hat into the ring and now we reach 170 countries.