Bill Taylor (bass) began his musical journey in the third grade, playing the clarinet, with later professional studies at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore.  He moved to Hollywood, California "to become a surfer and hippie," and worked as an electrical engineer in the aerospace industry "to support his addiction to music."  As well as playing the bass, Bill is an outstanding pianist and can be heard regularly at several venues in the Sacramento area.  West Coast Swing dancing, whitewater rafting, and snow skiing are high on Bill's personal recreation list.

 

Gail Crawford (percussion) plays World Music drums and other percussion instruments.   A member of the American Recorder Orchestra of the West for several years, she has performed in several ensembles, having played the recorder for over 15 years. Gail also serves on the Board of the Sacramento Recorder Society. Connecting sound to words, Gail also expresses her love of melody and rhythm through writing poetry: she has been doing this since she was eight. Strongly connected with nature, Gail volunteers at the Folsom Zoo Sanctuary and with Sierra Wild Life Rescue. She also hikes.

 

Mike Taylor (guitar) is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area.  Mike's musical journey began when he started to learn the guitar from a friend's father. Mike wanted to make music with his friends, so he began to teach himself jazz guitar technique and won a chair in his high school jazz band. Mike has performed as a guitar soloist, with jazz combos and surf bands, and country bands and big bands. To keep body-and-soul together, he's held many non-music jobs, including working for the Southern Pacific Railroad and as a professional photographer.  And, just to round things out (as the song says), there was a time in his life when made his living “pumping gas.”  Although Mike and Bill share the same name, they are not "The Taylor Brothers."  They frequently perform together as brothers-in-music, however.

 

 

Fred Gorin (trumpet and flugelhorn) grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, playing trumpet in symphonic orchestras. His early childhood memories include all-day-long romps with friends on the Presidio (where his father was a military physician). His love of jazz developed two decades ago when he was drawn to Latin, Funk, and Hard Bop. This coincided with the addition of Flugelhorn to his stable of performance instruments. When not performing with Escapé, Fred plays “eclectic horn” parts in Sacramento-based jazz and Latin bands.

 

Jeffrey Hoover (saxophone, flute, and vocals) hails from "the Middle Coast" (the Northern Indiana / Chicagoland region) and is the woodwind player for Escapé.  He began playing clarinet when he was in the fourth grade and took up the saxophone for jazz band in his junior year in high school.  Equally at home with classical and commercial music styles, he has performed with combos, bands, and orchestras (as a musician and conductor), touring in the United States, Western Europe, and parts of Eastern Europe including Hungary, Russia, Latvia, and Poland.  Jeffrey's career also includes university teaching (music theory, composition, and humanities) and creative work as an award-winning classical composer and fine-arts painter.