Philip Catherine

Born in London in 1942 to an English mother and a Belgian father, and raised in Brussels after a spell in Germany, Philip Catherine quickly established himself in the European jazz scene with a guitar style notable for its singing phrasing, influenced as much by Georges Brassens as by Django Reinhardt. Professionally active from the late 1950s, he toured in the early 1960s with organist Lou Bennett and later crossed paths with Dexter Gordon and Stéphane Grappelli, before being invited to the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1969 with a sextet co‑led with Jacques Bekaert. In the early 1970s he joined Jean‑Luc Ponty’s Experience and co‑founded Pork Pie with Charlie Mariano and Jasper van’t Hof — a project blending modern jazz, swing, fusion touches and European lyricism. His meeting with Larry Coryell marked another milestone, performing and recording as a duo on Twin House (1977) and Young Django (1978), experiences that also led him to record with Charles Mingus. Over the decades Catherine alternated between acoustic and electric formats, duos, trios and orchestral projects, with albums such as Guitars (1975), Babel (1980), Transparence (1986), Blue Prince (2000), New Folks (2014), La belle vie (2019) and Pourquoi (2022).