THE BAND
Rikard Sjöblom
Rikard started playing accordion at the age of 6, and guitar at 10. When he was 17 he bought a Hammond organ and formed the duo Bootcut with Petter Diamant. Bootcut released two CDs on their own called Hammond vs Drums (2002) and De Fluff (2005). A digital only release called Suspended Animation saw the light of day almost ten years later and a fourth album has been recorded.
Rikard is best known for his band Beardfish. He formed Beardfish with David Zackrisson, Gabriel Olsson and Petter Diamant in 2001. Petter and Gabriel left the band and were replaced by Magnus Östgren and Robert Hansen in 2002, with the addition of a fifth member, Stefan Aronsson, who recorded the first album with the band and then departed.
After two self-released albums, Beardfish signed to InsideOut Music in 2006 and went on to release three albums for the label before splitting up in 2016. Beardfish toured widely and supported Spock’s Beard, Pain of Salvation and Flying Colors amongst many others.
Rikard has always written and recorded music alongside his work with Beardfish, and these recordings eventually led to a self-released album under his own name in 2004 called Cyklonmannen, a musical (instrumental) interpretation of a novel by the Swedish beatnik author Sture Dahlström.
After this it took five years until the next solo album, Please Be Quiet, was released. On this album, the Gungfly moniker was first used. Gungfly is a Swedish word meaning unsecure ground and this band identity has featured on all of Rikard’s subsequent solo ventures. When Beardfish disbanded in 2016, Rikard signed as a solo artist (Rikard Sjöblom’s Gungfly) with InsideOut Music and has since released two albums with them and a 5 CD box set spanning the ten years leading up to his signing with the label.
Rikard joined Big Big Train in 2014 when the band was preparing to play live again. Although initially recruited as a touring musician, the close bond that developed led to him being asked to join the band as a full-time member.
Clare Lindley
Clare Lindley grew up in the 1970s in rural Aberdeenshire in Scotland, where a rich traditional music culture still sits happily amongst popular music. She learned classical viola at school and played in string quartets and orchestras. Her tenuous claim to fame is that she was in a string quartet at school with J.K. Rowling’s husband!
On leaving school Clare moved to the bright lights of Aberdeen, discovering blues jams and folk music sessions where she started to find Scottish fiddle music more socially acceptable, as well as knocking around with lots of blues guitarists and pretending to play lead guitar on her newly acquired fiddle.
Clare played in the duo Green for nine years and they released an album on Lochshore Records called Found On The Wave. They played folk clubs and Scottish folk festivals in the highlands and islands as well as gigging extensively all over Europe. Around this time Clare learned how to dance-call for ceilidhs, which were a popular feature of the Aberdeen music scene. She fronts a ceilidh band called Big Jessie, who have played all over Europe and have also gigged in Tanzania.
In the late 1990s Clare moved to London and played on the London Irish scene with cult band Six Mile Walk for five years as well as picking up freelance work gigging and recording with various bands. She also joined an Iranian prog/folk/rock band called Kooch.
In 2009 Clare joined Stackridge and toured with them until they hung up their guitars in 2015. She became part of the trio DLM (Davis Lindley Mullan) with Andy Davis from Stackridge and cellist Brian Mullan. DLM have released two CDs called DLM and Night Fishing.
She regularly plays concerts for old and vulnerable people for the charity Music In Hospitals.
Clare was approached by Greg Spawton in the middle of the first winter lockdown in 2020, who asked if she would be interested in playing some songs with tricky time signatures, resulting in her joining Big Big Train. Her first recorded work with Big Big Train is on the Welcome To The Planet album and Clare made her live debut on the band’s September 2022 tour.
Nick D’Virgilio
Nick started playing drums at the age of 5. He joined his first band at 15 and began to develop his own personal style based on feel and groove alongside advanced technique.
Nick attended the Dick Grove School of Music in Los Angeles where he studied drumming, song writing and singing. After music school he became a working musician, taking every gig he could get and attending jam sessions all over the city.
In 1994, Nick was asked by Kevin Gilbert to play The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway at a festival called Progfest. Subsequently, Nick joined Kevin’s band, THUD. When not touring with THUD, Nick spent a lot of time at Kevin’s studio, learning the art of engineering, and jamming with other musicians. One of these musicians was drummer Brian MacLeod, who recommended Nick to Roland Orzabal of Tears For Fears for the Raoul and the Kings Of Spain world tour. Nick flew to the UK and rehearsed with Tears For Fears at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios. These rehearsals began a long association with Tears For Fears which lasted from 1995 to 2010. In 1997, Nick returned to England to play drums on the final Genesis studio album, Calling All Stations.
Alongside his work with Kevin Gilbert, Tears For Fears and Genesis, Nick had co-founded Spock’s Beard in 1992. Their first album was released in 1995 and over the next seven years Spock’s Beard recorded five more albums and toured extensively. After vocalist Neal Morse left the band in 2002, Nick became lead singer. He remained with Spock’s Beard until 2011, recording four more albums as singer and drummer. He has since returned to the band from time to time as guest drummer.
Nick has released two solo albums (2001’s Karma and 2020’s Invisible, the latter featuring Tony Levin, Paul Gilbert, Randy McStine, Jonas Reingold, Jem Godfrey and many more well-known musicians) and an EP (Pieces). He also formed power trio The Fringe with Randy McStine and Jonas Reingold, releasing an eponymous album in 2016. He has performed with UK progressive rock band Frost* and appeared on their 2009 live recording, The Philadelphia Experiment. He has also played drums for Steve Hackett on three albums, The Night Siren (2017), At The Edge of Light (2019) and Surrender Of Silence (2021). He toured with Steve Hackett in late 2022 in Canada and the United States, deputising for regular Hackett drummer Craig Blundell.
From 2010 to 2014, Nick was drummer, singer, and assistant bandleader for Cirque du Soleil’s TOTEM, performing the show more than 1400 times (including two lengthy runs at the Royal Albert Hall in London).
In 2014, Nick joined musical instrument retailer, Sweetwater Sound where he creates demonstration videos and serves as the Sweetwater Studios’ first-call session drummer.
Nick first met Big Big Train’s Greg Spawton in 2006 at Aubitt Studios in Southampton. Nick performed drums on two songs on Big Big Train’s 2007 album, The Difference Machine and, after recording all drums on The Underfall Yard, joined Big Big Train as a full member in 2010.
Alberto Bravin
Alberto was born in Trieste, on Italy’s north-eastern border with Slovenia.
His involvement in music began at the age of 3 when he started taking piano lessons. Later on he developed an interest in electronic keyboards and synthesizers and this paved the way for his love of progressive rock music.
Aged 17, Alberto began studying opera singing at the Trieste Conservatory and after a couple of years he moved to London where he graduated in modern singing. Alongside his singing and piano playing, Alberto is also a self-taught guitarist, bassist and drummer.
Following his studies in London, Alberto returned to Trieste where he opened his own recording studios (Echoes Recording Studios). He released two albums (Sinestesia and The Day After Flower) with his band Sinestesia (featuring Alberto, Roby De Micheli, Alessandro Sala and Paolo Marchesich of Rhapsody Of Fire). Both albums were produced by Franz Di Cioccio of Italian progressive rock legends PFM – Premiata Forneria Marconi. Alberto also recorded and mixed Rhapsody Of Fire’s eleventh album, 2016’s Into The Legend.
In 2015 Alberto joined PFM (alongside Marco Sfogli) as a singer and additional guitarist and keyboard player. With PFM he played around 200 shows, both in Italy and worldwide, and released two albums (2017’s Emotional Tattoos and 2021’s I Dreamed Of Electric Sheep).
Alberto joined Big Big Train as the band’s lead vocalist in spring 2022 and performed his first shows with the band in September 2022.
Alberto is both a Beatles fanatic and a progressive rock and metal aficionado.
Gregory Spawton
Gregory was a late starter to rock music, taking up guitar at the age of 17.
Aside from being a member of a church choir, Gregory’s only musical experience before Big Big Train was in a band called Equus, which played a number of shows in and around his hometown of Sutton Coldfield in the early 1980s.
After taking a degree in archaeology at Reading University, Greg moved to Dorset. He formed Big Big Train with Andy Poole in 1990. He became BBT’s bass player from 2009.
Although he trained as an archaeologist, Gregory ended up working as a specialist on homelessness and only continued to write songs for Big Big Train as a hobby. After the band began to show some signs of success he was finally able to become a full-time musician in 2016.
Oskar Holldorff
Oskar grew up on Nesodden, a peninsula opposite the Norwegian capital Oslo. He was introduced to the world of music from day dot and was singing harmonies in broken English long before he knew what the words meant. He started taking piano lessons at age 6.
In his teenage years, Oskar began writing, producing and performing original material, both solo and as part of various bands. Later he moved to Oslo, where he took a master’s degree in music with a focus split between keyboards and film music.
During that time he founded Dim Gray alongside guitarist Håkon Høiberg, drummer Tom Ian Klungland and former bassist Robin Kirknes. In Dim Gray, Oskar handles vocals, keyboards and production, and writes much of the material. The band released their debut album Flown in 2020, which was followed by their acclaimed second album Firmament in 2022. A third album is expected to be released in 2024.
In May 2022 Dim Gray earned a standing ovation performing at the Marillion Weekend in Stockholm before suporting Big Big Train during BBT’s shows in the UK and the Netherlands in September 2022. The band also played a Norwegian festival and an album launch show for Firmament and expect to tour further in 2023, including playing the Prog At Sea cruise from 5th to 7th May, the Marillion UK Weekend in Leicester on 27th May and the 2 Days Prog + 1 Festival in Italy on 2nd September.
Oskar has featured in a number of bands and productions during his relatively short career in music. His work has ranged from playing experimental prog in near empty clubs or traditional folk music to drowsy school children, to performing on prime time TV shows with some of Norway’s biggest pop artists.
With his father, Per Øystein Sørensen of Fra Lippo Lippi, Oskar has performed a televised show and recorded a live album with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, as well as playing several arena gigs in the Philippines, the earliest of which at the age of 19. Oskar is also a voice actor and piano teacher.
Oskar deputised for keyboardist Carly Bryant on Big Big Train’s September 2022 tour and became a full member of the band in January 2023.
Paul Mitchell
Paul grew up in Bury, Greater Manchester, where his passion for music began at an early age in the local brass band scene. He studied at Chetham’s School of Music before continuing his education at the Royal College of Music in London.
Paul’s career has included a wide range of musical experiences. He has performed with ensembles such as the Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Orchestra and is a member of the Syd Lawrence Orchestra, touring the UK and abroad with their Big Band shows. He has also worked with leading classical groups, including the BBC Concert Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Hallé, and the Philharmonia Orchestra.
In musical theatre, Paul was a deputy musician for productions of Sister Act and La Bamba, demonstrating his ability to adapt to different styles. In October 2024, Paul joined the international tour of the musical Chicago, bringing his skills to audiences worldwide.
Earlier that year, he performed with Big Big Train during their UK and European tour for The Likes of Us, playing trumpet and contributing vocals and keyboards before touring North America and performing in Portugal with the band in spring 2025.
Paul joined Big Big Train as a permanent member in July 2025.
PREVIOUS MEMBERS
DAVID LONGDON
David Longdon, Big Big Train’s lead vocalist since 2009, died on 20th November 2021 in hospital in Nottingham in the UK following an accident at home. His funeral was held on 6th January 2022 in the Amber Valley in Derbyshire in the UK and was attended by David’s partner Sarah Ewing, very close friends and family.
On 22nd March 2022, Kingmaker Management and Big Big Train hosted a memorial evening at Kings Place in London to celebrate David’s life. David’s Big Big Train bandmates past and present, alongside the BBT team, welcomed over 100 guests from within the music industry – all of whom had worked with David in some way. The evening included a number of acoustic performances of music written by or closely associated with David, both within and outside Big Big Train, as well as spoken word tributes.
David made an extraordinary contribution to Big Big Train and enriched the lives of so many people with his music and his personality. We miss him deeply and will always remember him. His memory will live on forever through his music with Big Big Train, Dyble Longdon and his solo work.