London-based pianist Tim Richards has been a presence on the UK and international jazz scene since the early 1980s.

Tim's first encounter with a piano was at the age of 8 in a dentist's waiting room. After classical piano lessons he began to teach himself jazz and blues from the age of 14, when he saw Thelonious Monk and Otis Spann on TV. In 1979 he formed the seminal modern jazz group Spirit Level, a band that toured the Britain and Europe extensively in the 1980s and 90s, released seven albums, and was nominated 'Best Small group' in the 1995 British Jazz Awards.

In recent years, Tim has won acclaim as a composer and arranger, developing ideas in the larger instrumental setting of his nine-piece band Great Spirit, which has featured key players on the British scene such as Pete King, Ed Jones, Gilad Atzmon, Denys Baptiste, Tony Kofi, Jason Yarde, Roger Beaujolais, Seb Rochford and many others. The band released their second CD Epistrophy (33Jazz120) in 2005 (5-star online review) and toured the UK for the fourth time in November 2006 with Finnish saxophonist Jari Perkiomaki, with the help of a New Music award from the PRS Foundation.

Tim has a Masters Degree in composition from London's Trinity College of Music, and has also written pieces for a wide variety of non-jazz ensembles, from string quartet to symphony orchestra, also collaborating with dancers and filmmakers.