Dominic Alldis was born in London into a family of classical musicians, his mother a violinist and his father the renowned choral conductor, John Alldis. He began piano lessons at the age of 6 and quickly discovered a passion for jazz and improvisation, playing his first professional gigs when he was 15. At the age of 19, he moved to Paris and continued his musical studies while performing on the Paris jazz scene.

In 1984, he returned to the UK to become resident-pianist at London’s
premiere jazz-cabaret venue, Pizza on the Park. During a two-year residency
he played opposite many of the world's leading cabaret entertainers (including Blossom Dearie, Dave Frishberg, and Bob Dorough) and jazz pianists (Teddy Wilson, Dave McKenna and Roger Kellaway).

During the period 1987-89, he studied composition with Konrad Boehmer and
Frederic Rzewski at the Royal Dutch Conservatory of Music in the Hague. In
1988 he was invited by the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music in
Amsterdam (STEIM) to develop a performance using live electronics and the
Yamaha MIDI Grand Piano. He then toured Europe during 1989-91 giving
concerts using the revolutionary Yamaha MIDI Grand Piano, culminating in an
ambient piano album Night Music for Lumina Records. Since then he has gone
on to establish an impressive musical career which straddles the worlds of
jazz and classical music.

In 2002 the Arts Council of England sponsored a UK tour of the Dominic
Alldis Octet in a project entitled “Themes from French Cinema”. The programme featured Dominic’s own contemporary arrangements of themes from classic films such as Un Homme et Une Femme, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg and Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday. The octet included Iain Ballamy (saxophone), Malcolm Creese (bass), Chris Wells (drums) and the Pavao Quartet. Venues included the Wigmore Hall (London), the Adrian Boult Hall (Birmingham) and the Queen's Hall (Edinburgh). The tour was extremely popular and led to many subsequent festival appearances, as well as a CD Themes from French Cinema.

Dominic has also recorded several albums as a singer-pianist in tribute to his
passion for the Great American and European Songbooks; featured songwriters
include the jazz pianist Bill Evans, the dramatist Noël Coward and film
composer Michel Legrand. Scenes We Once Knew was released in 2008 and is a celebration of legendary singer-pianists Nat Cole, Shirley Horn and Blossom
Dearie.

Since 1993, Dominic has taught improvisation to classical pianists and opera
singers at the Royal Academy of Music and in 2006 directed the first ever
jazz-singing masterclass at the RAM. He has also written two highly
successful books, A Classical Approach to Jazz Piano Harmony and A Classical
Approach to Jazz Piano Improvisation, both published worldwide by the Hal
Leonard Corporation. In 2000, he was made an Honorary Associate of the Royal Academy of Music and in 2009 became a Steinway Artist.

During the past 10 years, Dominic has also cultivated a parallel career as a
business speaker, working with some of the world’s leading companies and
business schools to create powerful learning experiences that use the
metaphor of music to explore a range of key business concerns: leadership,
teamwork and innovation. In 2001, he founded Music & Management to provide a range of orchestral and jazz presentations for executive training
programmes. His client-base is now worldwide and he makes frequent trips to
the Europe, Asia and the US.

In 2009, Dominic released his latest album, Songs We Heard, featuring
improvisations on nursery rhymes from around the world. This evocative album bring a unique jazz treatment to nursery rhymes as familiar as ‘Frère
Jacques’, ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ and ‘Three Blind Mice’, as well as
less familiar children’s songs from across the globe. It is a piano trio
album and features Mark Hodgson (bass) and Stephen Keogh (drums).

In 2010, Dominic formed the Canzona Chamber Orchestra to perform classical repertoire and cross-over projects with leading jazz musicians. The orchestra's inaugural concert took place at St James's Piccadilly in April 2010 and featured Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings, Britten's Simple Symphony and the premiere of A Childhood Suite by Dominic Alldis, scored for jazz piano trio and orchestra.