Tim's first encounter with a piano was at the age of 8 in a dentist's waiting room. After classical piano lessons he began to teach himself jazz and blues from the age of 14, when he saw Thelonious Monk and Otis Spann on TV. In 1979 he formed the seminal modern jazz group Spirit Level, a band that toured the Britain and Europe extensively in the 1980s and 90s, released seven albums, and was nominated 'Best Small group' in the 1995 British Jazz Awards.