Joe Roberts

Education: Bmus(hons) in Jazz from the Guildhall School of Music
Industry speciality: booking gigs
Area of expertise: saxophone

Hi, Matt Fripp here.

I’m British but currently based in France, where I live with my wife and our two sons.

I’m a jazz fan who became a musician before moving onto the ‘business’ side of the music industry. I’ve been working as a booking agent and artist manager for jazz musicians since 2008, representing more than 40 artists for more than 2,000 club, venue and festival gigs in Europe, North America & Asia. I talk about it in this interview for US publication All About Jazz.

I graduated from a 4-year jazz saxophone degree at The Guildhall School of Music in London back in 2008 and, about a year later, started out working for one of the UK’s leading jazz music companies, which dealt with bookings, management & publicity.

It was there that I had the chance to learn about the music business, booking tours for band and musicians including Kyle Eastwood, Marius Neset, Get The Blessing, Empirical, China Moses, Tim Garland & Michael Wollny – as well as developing my own management roster featuring Anthony Strong (UK) & Hailey Tuck (USA).

After about 6 years of that, I left to set up my own agency – and started writing articles which I posted here, at Jazzfuel.com…

1995: began learning piano
1999: began learning saxophone
2004: started a 4-year degree in jazz [saxophone] at London’s Guildhall School of Music
2008: graduated music college with a BMus(hons) to work as a freelance musician & teacher
2010: started working as a booking agent for a leading UK music company
2016: set up a booking & management company and launched Jazzfuel.com
2017: launched the How To Get More Jazz Gigs online course
2019: began working album release press campaigns for independent jazz artists
2020: started writing and sharing articles for people who want to discover more jazz music

I now host Jazzfuel.com full time, sharing tips, tools and resources with both professional jazz musicians and serious jazz fans around the world.

Whilst we have some super talented musicians and journalists writing articles for the Jazzfuel site (find out more about them here) I still love writing content myself; below are some of the latest ones.

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Joe Roberts

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