Nikki Iles

b. 16 May 1963, Dunstable, Bedfordshire, England. While still at primary school, Iles played harmonica and clarinet and at the age of 11 she won a Junior Exhibitioner's Scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music where she studied piano and clarinet. She also joined the Bedfordshire Youth Jazz Orchestra, at which time she decided upon the piano as her principal instrument. In 1981, she went to the Leeds College of Music and on graduating three years later she settled in Yorkshire. She joined the group Emanon, led by trumpeter Richard Iles, to whom she was married at the time, an...