Sir George Ivan Morrison OBE – known professionally as Van Morrison, is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose recording career spans six decades.

Much of Morrison’s music is structured around the conventions of soul music and early rhythm and blues. An equal part of his catalogue consists of lengthy, spiritually inspired musical journeys that show the influence of Celtic tradition, jazz and stream-of-consciousness narrative, such as the album Astral Weeks. The two strains together are sometimes referred to as “Celtic soul”.

Moving between California, Ireland, and London, Morrison seemed oblivious to public taste and reaction to him. He pursued an interest in the music of his Celtic roots by collaborating with the Chieftains, developed his lifelong fondness for jazz with appearances at Ronnie Scott’s Club in London, and wrote a series of songs in his own increasingly complex style that gave unmistakable evidence of a deep and unfulfilled spiritual yearning, releasing albums on an almost annual basis well into the 21st century. Yet he was at his best onstage, where he could mix, match, and contrast all these approaches, indulging his love of the gifts of skilled musicians to his advantage and, no less, to theirs.

Eighteen of his albums have reached the top 40 in the United States, twelve of them between 1997 and 2017.  He has received two Grammy Awards, the 1994 Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, the 2017 Americana Music Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting and has been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2016, he was knighted for services to the music industry and to tourism in Northern Ireland.