Django Bates

He was the inaugural artistic director of the music festival FuseLeeds in 2004. He used this opportunity to initiate the first orchestral commission for Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead. Django also commissioned sixty composers including Laurie Anderson, Gavin Bryars, Patrick Moore, and John Zorn, to write one bar each. He then quilted these bars into the piece "Premature Celebration", which was performed by Evan Parker and the London Sinfonietta to celebrate Parker's 60th birthday.

In 2002, he was a tutor at the Banff Centre jazz program alongside Jim Black and Dave Douglas. In July 2005 he was appointed Professor of Rhythmic Music at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory (RMC) in Copenhagen. He was appointed visiting professor of jazz at the Royal Academy of Music in London in September 2010. In September 2011 Django Bates was appointed Professor of Jazz at HKB Bern Switzerland.

The Wire voted Bates Best UK Jazz Composer in 1987 and 1990. In 1997, he won the Jazzpar Prize. In 2008, he was nominated for the PRS New Music Award. He was awarded a fellowship by the Leeds College of Music in 1995.

Bates founded Human Chain in 1979 and in the 1980s he rose to prominence in a jazz orchestra called Loose Tubes. In 1991, he started the 19-piece jazz orchestra Delightful Precipice. He also assembled the Powder Room Collapse Orchestra (which recorded Music for The Third Policeman) and created Circus Umbilicus, a musical circus show. Bates has appeared as a sideman or member of Dudu Pukwana's Zila, Tim Whitehead's Borderline, Ken Stubbs's First House, Bill Bruford's Earthworks, Sidsel Endresen, and in the bands of George Russell and George Gruntz. He has performed with Michael Brecker, Tim Berne, Christian Jarvi, Vince Mendoza, David Sanborn, Kate Rusby, and Don Alias.

Bates was born in Beckenham, Kent, and attended Sedgehill School. While at this school, he also attended the Centre for Young Musicians in London (1971–77), where he learned trumpet, piano, and violin. In 1977-78 he studied at Morley College. In 1978 he enrolled at the Royal College of Music to study composition but left after two weeks.

Django Bates (born 2 October 1960) is a British composer, multi-instrumentalist, band leader and educator. He plays the piano, keyboards and the tenor horn and writes large-scale compositions on commission. He has been described as "One of the most talented musicians Britain has produced, and his work covers the entire spectrum of jazz, from early jazz though bebop and free jazz to jazz-rock fusion."