About
Andy played in a string of bands in the mid-eighties before the formation, in 1988, of the Wizards of Twiddly, a band beloved of Viv Stanshall, which went on to play with Kevin Ayers for two years in the nineties and provide music for a number of theatrical productions and performance events, for example Thruppeny Story by Kaboodle productions.
He toured Europe extensively playing the music of Frank Zappa with the Muffin Men featuring original Mothers of Invention drummer Jimmy Carl Black, bringing him into musical contact with original Mothers Don Preston and Bunk Gardener and later Zappa musicians such as Napoleon Murphy Brock, Ike Willis and Mike Keneally. When the band collaborated with the 10/10 ensemble from the Philharmonic Orchestra for the When Worlds Collide project, He worked with Ian Gardiner on the arrangements.
Andy has worked extensively as a composer for theatre, film, dance, installation and large scale spectical, notably with Kaboodle productions in the 90s, developing a dynamic storytelling style fusing theatre, music, visual spectical, acrobatics and multi-media. Nationally he has worked with many performance companies including Mischief La Bas, Cocoloco, Zho, John Fox (Wealfare State) and Liverpool Lantern Company with whom he helped develop the Halloween lantern procession in Sefton Park. He has worked extensively in Europe with Junges Ensamble Stuttgart, Staat Theatre Kassel, ESMAE Porto ,Stimmen Fest Lorrach, the Kaserne Basel, Dortmund Schauspielhaus, and most recently at the Bremen Shakespeare, as well as further afield the Limon institute New York.
Andy has also contributed to recordings or live performances by, among others, Viv Stanshall, Super Furry Animals, Coral, Urban Strawberry Lunch, Gorkys Zygotic Mynci, John Head and the Streams, Herbie Flowers, Gary Daly, Zeb, Shack, Lightening Seeds, Bill Rhyder-Jones, Sandi Thom, China Crisis, Emily and the Faves, Ella Guru, The Weave, and The Tables. He has a small recording facility, Kitchen Studios, where he has produced music by Emily and the Faves, Dead Belgian, Jimmy Carl Black, The Wizards of Twiddly and others, and in which he records music for theatre, dance and installation.