Tom Ravenscroft

Original version

6 Music

BBC 6

Music: Dance & Electronica

Music: Rock & Indie

Tom presents his own unique blend of music, unlike anything anywhere else in radio.

Tom presents his own unique blend of music with genuine passion and knowledge, unlike anything anywhere else in radio.

Tom Ravenscroft: with Laraaji

with Laraaji

BBC Radio 6 Music - Tom Ravenscroft, with Laraaji

Features a special home-recorded session from New York-based artist Laraaji.

Features a special home-recorded session from New York-based musician, mystic and laughter meditation practitioner Laraaji, who has just released his new album Sun Piano.

Features a special home recorded session from New York based musician, mystic and laughter meditation practitioner Laraaji, who's just released his new album Sun Piano.
He grew up playing gospel and church music in 1950s New Jersey.   To begin with he would imitate his favourite piano players, such as Fats Domino, Errol Garner, Ahmad Jamal and Oscar Peterson, before moving onto writing his own choral and doo-wop pieces whilst still in high school.  From 1962 to 1964, he attended Howard University in Washington DC where he studied music theory and composition with a piano major, and he met Curtis Mayfield, Donny Hathaway and Bobby Timmons. 
At college he took a left turn into comedy, which led him to the nightclub stand-up circuit in New York City. During this period he compered at the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem, warming up for artists such as Barry White and Roberta Flack, appeared in a theatre production alongside a young Morgan Freeman, and had a bit part in cult film Putney Swope wih Antonio Fargas.  By the early-70s he was working at the Aquarius Coffee Shop in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and playing Fender Rhodes electric piano in a fusion band, The Winds Of Change. In the mid-70s a spiritual awakening led him to trade his guitar in for an autoharp, and he began to play more freeform, cosmically inclined improvisations on the streets of New York City. Brian Eno saw him playing one night in Washington Square Park and invited him to record an album for his seminal Ambient series (Ambient 3: Day Of Radiance, released 1980). 
In the 80s Laraaji self-released a prolific series of experimental home-recorded cassette albums which were sold on the street, in psychic bookstores and new age ‘head shops’.  More recently he has appeared on recordings with Pharoah Sanders, Bill Laswell and Jonathan Wilson, and released collaborative albums with a younger generation of artists including Blues Control, Sun Araw and Dallas Acid.

BBC Radio 6 Music

Classic concerts & sessions from the BBC's vast music store. It's your musical heritage.

BBC 6 Music brings together the cutting edge music of today, the iconic and groundbreaking music of the past 40 years and unlimited access

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Tom Ravenscroft

with Laraaji

Genres

Brand

6 Music

About BBC Radio 6 Music