Find Roy Ayers London tickets

Vibraphone master brings the sunshine everybody loves at the start of Spring 2019.

Skiddle Staff

Last updated: 21st Nov 2018

Image: Universal Attractions (credit)

Jazz funk legend Roy Ayers has announced that he will play two consecutive nights in Spring 2019 at one of London's best loved medium sized venues. The highly influential vibraphone player and composer will be joined by his full band at the beautiful Union Chapel in London on Friday 12th April and Saturday 13th April 2019.

At 78 years of age, Roy Ayers still maintains an international touring schedule, bringing his beloved hits from the 1970s and 1980s to audiences whose musical lives have been transformed by his sound. Ayers's work has been cited as a key influence in the worlds of hip hop, house and broken beat. He began his career playing jazz in the early 1960s, but it was upon forming his own band, Roy Ayers Ubiquity, in the early 1970s, that he first started to be acknowledged as a wholly singular talent.

He pioneered a dancefloor-friendly, soul and jazz infused strain of jazz that would later be labelled jazz funk, writing, playing and producing hits such as 'We Live In Brooklyn, Baby', '2000 Black' and 'Everybody Loves The Sunshine'. Towards the end of the 1970s he incorporated disco into his sound, but it was on his own terms. He produced a fully live, funk and soul-driven and often slower tempo disco than offered by the mainstream.

His hugely influential hits from this period, such as 'Cant You See Me', 'Love Will Bring Us Back Together', 'Running Away', Get On Up, Get On Down', 'Sweet Tears' and 'Chicago' are dancefloor staples in clubs and festivals to this day. He formed two of his own labels, Uno Melodic and Gold Mink Records, to further explore these sounds, producing hits by the likes of Sylvia Striplin, 80s Ladies and Bobbi Humphrey which would later help others define this strand of disco as boogie. Ayers subsequently went on to work with the likes of Fela Kuti, Whitney Houston, Gang Starr's Guru, Masters at Work, Kerri Chandler, Erykah Badu and Tyler, The Creator.

Find Roy Ayers tickets below.