February 2012 and we’re in freezing snowy Paris!  Chris invited us over to his studio for a recording session, where we spent a great evening together recording samples on a number of different instruments – from piano and swarmandal-tanpura, to various percussion and banjo, even a Greek bouzouki previously owned by Vangelis!

Building his first guitar aged 8 and playing in public at 14, Chris Birkett is an incredibly talented multi-Grammy Award winning producer, song-writer, composer, multi-instrumentalist and sound engineer!  Over the years, his productions and collaborations have sold more than a hundred million records and earned him three of those coveted Grammys.

Mentored in his early days by Tony Visconti, producer of David Bowie, T-Rex (and later Rita Mitsouko and The Klaxons), Chris was given a great introduction to the world of music production.  By his mid 20’s he was producing in his own right, working with artists including Sinead O’Connor, Talking Heads, Alison Moyet, Dexys Midnight Runners and The Pogues.

In the early 90’s, Chris moved to France, opening a studio in Bordeaux where he collaborated with a number of world-music artists and also returned to performing.  He released his first album Men From the Sky in 1992 (his single Where Do We Go From Here was later included on the Polygram album One Voice, One Love).  In 2009 he recorded his second album Freedom which featured Tony Visconti, Buffy Sainte-Marie, David Hykes and André Ceccarelli.  Check out his blog here.

2017 UPDATE NOTE:  Still regularly performing and often organising workshops, Chris now lives in Toronto, Canada, where he set up The Age of Awakening Foundation, created to help musicians from developing countries realise their potential through assitance from the foundation.