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Shabaka Hutchings

Shabaka Hutchings, a saxophonist, band leader and composer, part of London’s community of younger jazz musicians as well as the city’s thriving improvised music scene. For Hutchings, composition is a chronicle of the zeitgeist inhabited by a composer; an exposition of his or her search for meaning and the structuring of experiences in aid of recognising this meaning when it appears.

As part of the Caribbean diaspora, he sees his role as that of pushing the boundaries of what musical elements are considered to be Caribbean. Constantly evaluating the nature of his relationship with musical material and tradition, he describes his attempts at composition as wrestling matches with questions of where and how the Caribbean can be encoded, and what happens when it is exposed to the western classical music cannon.

Hutchings was born in 1984 in London. He moved to Barbados at the age of six, began studying classical clarinet aged nine and remained until sixteen. Shabaka's primary project is the group Sons of Kemet, which won the 2013 MOBO Award for Jazz Act of the Year. In June 2014 Shabaka was invited to join the Sun Ra Arkestra, performing with them and recording a session for BBC Radio 3. He has performed and recorded with Courtney Pine's Jazz Warriors, Mulatu Astatke and the Heliocentrics, Polar Bear and Soweto Kinch. Some of the many notable musicians he has shared the stage with include Jack DeJohnette, Charlie Haden and the Liberation Music Orchestra, Louis Moholo, Evan Parker, King Sunny Ade and Orlando Julius to name a few.

In 2010 Shabaka was granted the title of BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist which allowed him to undertake numerous commissions, as well as broadcast performances on radio. These included performances with Julian Joseph, the BBC Big Band, and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (with whom he performed the Copland Clarinet Concerto in the Wales Millennium Centre). In 2012 he was commissioned to write a piece for the BBC Concert Orchestra which included members his own group (Sons of Kemet) and electronic musicians Leafcutter John and Jason Singh. This concert was received to critical praise at the South Bank's Queen Elizabeth Hall. In July 2013 Shabaka was commissioned by Leasowes Bank Music Festival to write a piece for clarinet and string quartet. He performed this piece with the Ligeti String Quartet to rave reviews (the Birmingham Post giving the concert 5 stars). Shabaka was nominated for Jazz Musician of the Year 2013 in the Parliamentary Jazz Awards.

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16
Album Review

Shabaka Hutchings: Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace

Read "Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace" reviewed by Chris May


Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes ... Since signing with with Impulse! in 2018, Shabaka Hutchings has become best known for his incendiary work on tenor saxophone with Sons Of Kemet, The Comet Is Coming and Shabaka & The Ancestors. Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace marks the start of a gentler, more instrospective phase in his music making. The trigger came during the pandemic, when Hutchings fell in love with the Japanese shakuhachi flute. The quietly spoken instrument first edged itself ...

2
Radio & Podcasts

Shabaka: This Is The Moment To Make Patient Music

Read "Shabaka: This Is The Moment To Make Patient Music" reviewed by Leo Sidran


Shabaka Hutchings grew up between the UK and Barbados. He started playing clarinet as a young boy in Barbados and eventually moved back to England to go to music school in the early 2000s.After college he began a period of working furiously on a kaleidoscopic range of projects and became an icon of the new sound of London jazz, which integrated African rhythms and modes, Caribbean and Middle eastern sounds and was largely danceable.Shabaka himself has ...

11
What is Jazz?

2024 Winter JazzFest Marathons: A Survival Guide

Read "2024 Winter JazzFest Marathons: A Survival Guide" reviewed by Ludovico Granvassu


Twenty years is a remarkable milestone for any activity, let alone one that comes with the wear and tear of a high-profile jazz festival that every year strives to up its own ante, like the Winter JazzFest. From January 11 to 18, 2024, fans, musicians, promoters and other industry people from around the world will converge to mark this special anniversary and celebrate what has become a cornerstone of New York's cultural architecture. Following the pattern ...

22
Album Review

Tom Skinner: Voices Of Bishara

Read "Voices Of Bishara" reviewed by Chris May


Voices Of Bishara is one of the top three jazz albums of 2022 so far and it would take the second comings of John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Horace Silver and Lee Morgan to threaten to dislodge it. Before going into the particulars, the backstory.... An epically cross-genre drummer, Skinner has lit up avantist British jazz and related musics for around twenty years. He emerged among the cohort of musicians loosely grouped around the self-help collective F-IRE (Fellowship ...

30
Interview

Jamie Krents: Hardcore Jazz Fan And New President Of Impulse!

Read "Jamie Krents: Hardcore Jazz Fan And New President Of Impulse!" reviewed by Chris May


For jazz lovers in general, and Impulse! devotees in particular, the future just got brighter, more orange and more black. Jamie Krents, a longtime Impulse! aficionado, has been appointed the label's president. In his previous role as executive vice president, Krents played a determining role in recent signings such as The Comet Is Coming (pictured), The Ancestors and Sons Of Kemet. Credentials do not come any stronger. In his first interview since taking up his new position ...

21
Album Review

The Comet Is Coming: Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam

Read "Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam" reviewed by Chris May


A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, tenor saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings (King Shabaka), synths maven Dan Leavers (Danalogue) and drummer Max Hallett (Betamax) were students at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama. As alumni, they formed The Comet Is Coming. To jumble allusions with as much abandon as the band approach cosmic jazz-rock, their continuing mission has been to seek out new soundworlds and to boldly go where no musicians have gone before. ...

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Radio & Podcasts

Shabaka Hutchings, Warne Marsh, Deanna Witkowski and More

Read "Shabaka Hutchings, Warne Marsh, Deanna Witkowski and More" reviewed by Jerome Wilson


This is an extremely varied selection of music ranging from spiritual blasts by Shabaka Hutchings and Franklin Kiermyer to sax mastery by Warne Marsh and Tony Malaby and torchy vocals from Dinah Washington and Helen Merrill. Playlist Henry Threadgill Sextett “I Can't Wait Till I Get Home" from The Complete Novus & Columbia Recordings of Henry Threadgill & Air (Mosaic) 00:00 Tony Malaby's Sabino “Corinthian Leather" from The Cave of Winds (Pyroclastic) 00:57 Tony Williams “Tomorrow Afternoon" from ...

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“Shabaka Hutchings is going places.” The Guardian

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Perceive Its Beauty,...

Impulse! Records
2024

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Break A Vase

Intakt Records
2022

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Afrikan Culture

Impulse! Records
2022

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Hyper-Dimensional...

Impulse! Records
2022

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Voices Of Bishara

Brownswood/International Anthem/Nonesuch
2022

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Black To The Future

Impulse! Records
2021

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