Background
Sedergreen was born in British Palestine in 1943 to Seamus (James, Jim) Sedergreen, a British Warrant Officer First Class, and Leah Erlichman, a milliner. Bob, together with his mother, and his sisters Joyce and Millie, settled in London and his father followed in 1948.
Career
Sedergreen has had a long and distinguished career as a performer, bandleader and educator. He has collaborated with leading Australian artists, including John Sangster, Don Burrows, and Brian Brown, and supported some of the biggest names in jazz, including National Adderley, Dizzy Gillespie and Milt Jackson. In 1947, His Majesty"s government sent the P&O steam ship Ortranto to evacuate all British families, as the British Mandate was coming to an end and Palestine would finally become Israel.
Bob played with the Fred Bradshaw Quartet (1962-1970), Ted Vining Trio (1971–2007), Alan Lee"s Plant (1973), Brian Brown"s Quintet (1974) and Brian Brown"s Quartet (1977-1979).
In the 1980s, he worked with the Australian Jazz Ensemble, Onaje and Peter Gaudion"s Blues Express and the popular Blues on the Boil. Bob has toured extensively both around Australia and overseas, including Montreal, Malaysia and Europe.
He has been advisor to the Montsalvat International Jazz Festival and involved in the introduction of new talent as well as negotiating and supervising the National Adderley Quintet and the McCoy Tyner Trio. As an educator, Bob has lectured at the Victorian College of the Arts and the University of Melbourne"s Faculty of Music.
He has also been an artist-in-residence at many Victorian secondary schools.
To play with Bob Sedergreen has been described as the "ultimate armchair ride". Sedergreen began hourly sets in Melbourne, Australia, in 2007, where he has taken to narration while performing the music of his life, taking time for comments, while still playing in chronological order to entertain the public in a one man jazz show, called, "Hear Maine Talking to Ya". Named after a National and Cannonball Adderley tune, and compared to "sitting on a bar stool, hearing a lifetime of jazz stories, Sedergreen"s new show has been compared to "sitting next to Bob on a bar stool hearing a lifetime of jazz stories".
Similar to a "virtual music book", reviewers continue to take his audience through the progression of his life as a pianist, using wit and his fifty years of experience as a jazz performer to entertain.