Bio

Swingin’ Both Ways are a husband and wife jazz duo. Kimba and Ryan fell in love over music and since then, they've embarked on a musical journey best described as ‘sublimely haphazard’.

Both Kimba and Ryan are sometime fixtures in the Melbourne jazz scene (when not busy birthing and raising their family band members), and have played all the major jazz venues in town.

Some performance highlights include the Kyoto jazz festival, the Edinburgh festival,
performances at the Australian Embassy in Paris and the St Kilda Festival.

Their unique and inspired sound draws on a wide canon of jazz, ancient blues, Japanese traditional music, and includes the odd Tom Waits cover.

Ryan is a multi-instrumentalist and sometimes includes the Japanese shamisen (three-stringed traditional banjo), accordion, and clarinet in their performances, while Kimba uses vocal improvisation to evoke a sound that swings and sticks in the heart strings.

Ryan Griffith was described by one Japanese magazine reviewer as being 'more music than human'. His dedication to his instrument and impressive simultaneous melody/bass line playing is complemented by his eloquent compositions and his commitment to teaching music to young people, focusing on improvisation and inspiration.

As a vocalist, Kimba Griffith literally grew up onstage. Blessed with a beautiful lonesome tone, but finding little natural aptitude for jazz mathematics, her study of the jazz form was by turns exhilarating and painfully slow.

Yet a passion for jazz and an incredible on-stage dynamic kept this sometimes unlikely pair playing together across several genre and continental shifts.