Biography

Born in England on 28th April 1949, Steve Jolliffe has been an active composer for forty years. His extraordinary career started in 1967, when he met Rick Davies and formed a group called The Joint, which evolved into Supertramp. Jolliffe's interest in classical music led him to the "Berlin High School for Music" in 1968. He was the first student to be accepted who could not read music. While at the school, he met Edgar Froese, and together with Klaus Schulze toured Germany for a year as one of the earliest incarnations of Tangerine Dream. Steve left Tangerine Dream and returned to England where he joined a blues/rock band called Steamhammer, and began touring throughout Europe. In 1973 Jolliffe left the group and began working on scoring and composing music for several films, including the award-winning documentary Tatoo.

Steve rejoined Tangerine Dream in 1978 and together with Froese, Christopher Franke and Klaus Krüger, recorded the album Cyclone. The quartet toured Europe that year and played to crowds of up to 100,000. Shortly afterward, Jolliffe left TD for the second time and went back to England to pursue a solo career. He recorded several albums in the 1980s. Two of those are "Journeys out of the Body" and "Beyond the Dream", (both available through Horizon Music). In 1983 Steve released "Japanese Butterfly" and in 1984 Beyond the Dream. Steve also collaborated with Klaus Schulze on a Wahnfried album called "Miditation". Jolliffe spent the rest of the decade recording library discs, for use in films. In 1990 Steve moved to America and released the album "Escape" the following year. During this time Jolliffe partnered with Horizon Music to distribute many of his CD's and, after releasing "Warrior" in 1992, became Horizon's first signee. Steve moved back to England in 1994 and released "Alien", which was less electronic than previous efforts and featured extensive use of flute and saxophone. Then Steve explored a new musical direction with the ambient/trance CD "Zanzi". He took this title from a French game of chance, and the disc was chosen by the nationally syndicated radio program Musical Starstreams as one of its Top Ten albums of 1996. Jolliffe also found the time to work with the group Eat Static- Merv Peplar and Joie Hinton (formerly of Ozric Tentacles) on their album Science of the Gods and has also created a duo with peplar entitled The Hi Fi Companions (released in February 2004), on the label Twisted Records. 1998 saw the release of Omni, a logical follow-up to Zanzi and in 1999 Deep Down Far. Like much of his varied work, this CD draws on elements of traditional electronic, ambient and classical music structures. The opening track has been used in advertisements on the Discovery Channel .

A year later, Jolliffe put out a compilation CD called Invitation, which features music from each of the aforementioned albums. One of his latest albums, "Space" and  "The Bruton Suite" were both released in 2003. This album has a stronger accent on classical themes. In 2004 Steve celebrated the release of his 25th album, "THE DOUBLE ALBUM" which coincided with the start of his European Tour in September 2004 in Poland and the UK.