Gareth Lockrane started playing at the age of 10 and after raiding his dad’s record collection discovered jazz at 14. Early influences included Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Bill Evans and Stan Getz on the jazz side whilst also being transfixed by the great blues/rock guitarists of the 60s and 70s as a child – BB King, Jimi Hendrix, Albert King, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy. Learning blues guitar solos on the flute at the age of 15 was a formative experience! The initial main flute inspirations were Frank Wess, James Clay, Roland Kirk, Bobby Jaspar and James Moody and later on he fell under the spell of visionaries like Jeremy Steig, Eric Dolphy, Hubert Laws, Paul Horn, James Newton and Eddie Parker amongst many others.
In 1994 he enrolled on the jazz course at the Royal Academy of Music in London where teachers included Stan Sulzmann, Martin Speake, John Thomas and Eddie Parker and where he struck up musical relationships with fellow students the Fishwick brothers, Tom Cawley, Osian Roberts, Orlando le Fleming and many others. In 1997, his band “The Jazz System” formed with Osian Roberts was a finalist in the Vienna Jazz Festival Grande Concours de Jazz. In 1998, he studied on the Lake Placid Jazz Course in New York with Joe Lovano, Dick Oatts and Jim McNeely and in 2000 was a finalist in the Young Jazz Musician of the Year competition.
Around this time he began to expand his flute family of instruments to include piccolo, alto and bass flutes as well as the standard C flute.
As well as his own bands,Gareth has been involved in many diverse projects on recording projects and live gigs – as a key member of the late great Bheki Mseleku’s group during his last years from 2005 to 2008 and also working extensively with the James Taylor Quartet since 2003, Phil Robson’s IMS Quintet featuring Mark Turner, as a featured soloist with Tommy Smith’s Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, Laurence Cottle’s Big Band, bands and recordings led by Quincy Jones, Dick Oatts, Tom Cawley, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Nikki Iles, Jodie Abacus, Reuben James, Lianne La Havas, Christine Tobin, Asaf Sirkis, Eddie Parker, Miguel Gorodi, Michael Janisch, Brian Charette, Michael Kiwanuka, Marti Pellow, Seal, Corrine Bailey Rae, Myles Sanko, Michael ‘Patches’ Stewart, Xantone Blacq, Kate Williams, Khari Cabral Simmons, Bokani Dyer, Guida de Palma, Heritage Orchestra, Adam Glasser, Claudio Passavanti, Dan Messore, Karen Lane, Patrick Cornelius, Sheryl Bailey, Callum Au Big Band, Simon Woolf, Incognito, Max Luthert, Georgia Mancio, Tristan Mailliot, Dave Preston, Nia Lynn’s Bannau Trio, Hans Koller, Sirius B, Anita Wardell, Natalie Williams, Paul Booth, Gwilym Simcock, Tom Richards Jazz Orchestra, The National Youth Jazz Orchestra and many mRecently Gareth has been a featured soloist on some outstanding movie soundtracks – the 2018 Michael Caine heist thriller “King of Thieves” with composer Benjamin Wallfisch, and the 2019 Steven Soderbergh Netflix movie “The Laundromat” with the legendary David Holmes.