Founded in 1997 by original Jazz Warriors double bassist/record producer, Gary Crosby and his partner, Janine Irons MBE, Dune Records is the award-winning recording divison of The Dune Music Company Limited, an artist management company specialising in British jazz artists emerging from the seminal Jazz Warriors which spawned Courtney Pine, Steve Williamson, Orphy Robinson, Gary Crosby, Cleveland Watkiss, et al and its new generation artist development programme, Tomorrow's Warriors.
The Tomorrow's Warriors programme set up by Gary Crosby to nurture and develop young jazz musicians enabled us to work closely with a number of immensely talented young musicians but, sadly, when they were ready to join the professional jazz circuit, there was no place to go. The major record companies were failing to recognise the talent and potential of so many young jazz artists and, even when they did see it, they were not willing to take a risk on these young bloods. Consequently, a lot of young talent was simply being ignored and, ultimately, wasted.
When it became clear that there was no possibility for these musicians to record on a major label, we did the obvious thing: we recorded them ourselves! We were determined not to cut corners and set about producing a top quality album, sonically and musically. It worked! Gary Crosby's Nu Troop got some great reviews for their album, MIGRATIONS which spurred us on to do more with our next set of Warriors, J-Life. With our third release (Denys Baptiste's BE WHERE YOU ARE), some major awards were won - adding to a string of awards for our first two releases - and this helped to establish Dune as a serious player in world-class British independent jazz.
Since then, Dune and our artists have gone on to release more award-winning albums, bagging more than 25 awards in the process.At Dune we are committed to:
* investing in the development of our artists and composers
* producing top quality original jazz music
* maintaining a strong presence of British jazz at the cutting edge on the international stage.
So, if you love great jazz, we think you'll love DUNE!
