Cardiff University Jazz Ensemble

Award winning multi instrumentalist Tori Freestone features in many of the UK’s most exciting ensembles, co leads a duo with pianist Alcyona Mick and leads her own trio with numerous releases to her name. She received the Ivor Novello Award for Jazz ensemble composition in 2022 for ‘Birds of 
Paradise’ which features on the most recent Tori Freestone/Alcyona Mick duo release ‘Make One Little Room an Everywhere’ and her most recent trio release 'El Mar de Nubes' was voted 'Jazz album of the Month' in the Guardian 2019. She was shortlisted for the 2017 Arts Foundation Award for Jazz Composition and the Parliamentary Jazz Award for Jazz Instrumentalist of the Year 2017 plus awarded PRS funding and the Help Musician's Do it Differently Award and Transmission fund in 2020 to write and record music for her duo and for a large ensemble composition project.

As an educator she has performed workshops for the Welsh College of Music, Birmingham Conservatoire, Leeds Conservatoire, Kingston University, Falmouth University and Truro College, and has lectured at the Royal Academy of Music, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Middlesex 
University and Trinity Laban. She is currently Professor in Jazz Performance and Jazz composition at Leeds Conservatoire, and visiting lecturer at the Royal Welsh College of Music plus tutors for the National Youth Jazz Collective running workshops and tutoring on summer schools alongside the likes of Dave Holland, Norma Winstone, Nikki Iles and some of the UK's finest musicians.
Tori is a Borgani (Italy) artist.

"Freestone has clearly listened widely, but her musicality and broad experiences have stirred all that input into an imposingly original sound", John Fordham, The Guardian 4 * review
“a flute and reeds player of nicely sinuous melodic invention” – The Telegraph
"I really dig her; she’s so organic..She sounds very relaxed, but she’s got a real burn to her playing on the tenor saxophone...my ears never get tired", Ingrid Jensen' 'Artist Choice' Article Jazz Times, USA
“Freestone has caused a stir far beyond the UK…” Leibnitz Jazz Festival review, Austria