Every Friday and Saturday evening join us in our beautiful restaurant. Dine in elegant surrondings with candle light and enjoy entertainment from one of our resident pianists Rupert Sheen or Tony Nicholls. The evenings events commence from 7pm, with a chocie from either our Table d’hote or A la carte Menus. Booking is essential. Please call 01829 700212

 

Musician Biography

Rupert Sheen- Friday Evening

Rupert Sheen’s first musical ambition to be a church organist was put on hold once he’d had his first piano lesson at the age of 6.Desperate to attend Ashton–on–Mersey School (because it had a great school band) he was taught trumpet, clarinet and piano by professional musician Ernie Waites. The school band went on to play for the queen when she visited LongfordPark, Manchester during her silver jubilee in 1977 and won a BBC TV competition called ‘Settle the Score’.

After leaving school and having had 2 jobs within the space of a year he took up music professionally when he joined ‘Orlando’, a jazz-rock group based in Sale Cheshire who wrote their own material. The group started writing pop songs and were finalists on BBC ‘Rising Stars’ in 1980. They also performed as support for Bucks Fizz, Modern Romance, Imagination, The Supremes and Matt Monroe. Out of this group came ‘National Pastime’ who secured a recording contract in London, supported ‘Kajagoogoo’ on aUK tour and went to Japanto promote their one and only album ‘Built to Break’.

In 1986 the band split up and Rupert went solo as a pianist singer spending the next ten years playing at several venues throughout the North West which culminated in a residency in the beautiful dining room of The Ritz Hotel, where guests included The Queen, Princes Charles, William and Harry, composer Andrew Lloyd-Webber and prime minister John Major.

These days, as well as playing at The Tollemache Arms, he can be seen regularly at Browns in Manchester city centre and the Lowry Hotel Salford where he has provoked a variety of nice reactions including singing or whistling (depending on if they had a gig that evening) from the likes of Don MacLean, Tom Jones, Cliff Richard and Rick Parfitt. Based on Jazz and swing, his music encompasses everything from classical to rock n roll and he specializes in finding out what people like and then giving them their own personalized rendition.