Alison Rayner

Alison Rayner is an award winning bassist and composer and has a career spanning more than 40 years, nearly 30 of which have been spent running the artist-led organisation Blow the Fuse.

Blow the Fuse was formed in 1989 by Alison with guitarist and fellow National Jazz Archive Patron Deirdre Cartwright. Their jazz club nights were inspired by Alison’s experience of seeing jazz guitarist Mike Stern playing in Bar 55, New York and hearing stories of Ronnie Scott and Pete King in the early days of Ronnie’s. As well as running jazz club nights, Blow The Fuse promotes tours, larger scale events and produces records.

Alison has been playing jazz and other contemporary styles since the mid-1970s. She spent five years in the 1980s with critically acclaimed Latin-jazz group The Guest Stars, touring all major international jazz venues and festivals across 17 counties and recording three albums.

She currently leads ARQ (the Alison Rayner Quartet), widely celebrated from extensive UK and European touring and critical acclaim for their first two albums, they continue to receive national and international radio play and critical acclaim from reviews in jazz and national press.

Alison also performs and records with amongst others, guitarist Deidre Cartwright, trumpeter Chris Hodgkins, vocalist Carol Grimes, Latin-jazz quartet Chico Chica and US-based singer-songwriter Zoe Lewis. She has played on around 30 albums.

Rayner teaches on jazz summer schools in the UK and abroad; composes and examines for an international examination board.