Howard Francis

Howard grew up in South London and started his music career at a young age when he was introduced to the piano at the local gospel church attended by his family. Fully devoted to his playing and singing, it wasn’t long before Howard joined the London Community Gospel Choir and from here the session work began to come through. The session work with the LCGC was a springboard in Howard’s career, allowing him to network with other musician’s already working in the commercial music industry. His career took off following a series of shows with Gloria Gayner before landing a regular gig with Terrence Trent Derby. Following this a long list of opportunities arose including; Westlife, Blue, Five, Van Morrison (Piano + Singing), Micca Paris, Tom Jones, JB Horns (Hammond), Louise Rednapp, Mistiquee, Brian Ferry, and Desiree.

The last 4 years has been busy time for Howard. Having just finished a series of world tours with the original Pop Idol superstar, Will Young; Howard is now getting ready to be reunited with one of Irelands most successful boy bands – Westlife, for their 2007 tour. The first time Howard played with Westlife was back in 2004, a time remembered by his introduction to the power of MOTIFES.

“I have been playing MOTIFES8 since 2004 having replaced my Clavinova whilst working with Westlife. The MOTIFES stood out in the press reviews so I tried it, loved it, bought it. Immediately I feel in love with the organs and realised the MOTIFES is great in the studio - the piano sound is so realistic and I love the rhodes. You don’t really have to edit the sounds as they are just there…. which makes this synth perfect for the pro user who has to work very quickly in rehearsals. The PLG-board expansion option is also very important for me – the polyphony expansion and extra voices allow me to create some fantastic combinations and bigger sounds”.

Career High Points:

In 2005 Howard was honoured to play for the Queen at her 80th birthday celebrations with just Will, himself and a Yamaha Concert Grand piano. Although a little nervous from the scale of the event , Howard and Will managed to perform exceptionally for her Majesty.

However, the moment that stand’s out to Howard as his biggest, was when he got to play with Andre Crouch. Andre, a legend in the Gospel community has always been an inspiration to Howard so when he came over to England and Howard got the gig you can only imagine how amazing that was for Howard and his family.

So what does the future hold for Howard:

Howard is currently touring the UK with Westlife and is also working on a project with Kiss FM’s DJ Swerve writing and producing new acts, taking on an R+B / Hip Hop flavour but with new ideas and plans to diversify.