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Alexander Hawkins

Alexander Hawkins is a composer, pianist, organist, and bandleader who is ‘unlike anything else in modern creative music’ (Ni Kantu) and whose recent work has reached a ‘dazzling new apex’ (Downbeat). A largely self-taught improviser, he works in a vast array of creative contexts. His own highly distinctive soundworld is forged through the search to reconcile both his love of free improvisation and profound fascination with composition and structure. His writing has been said to represent ‘a fundamental reassertion of composition within improvised music’ (Point of Departure), and his voice one of the ‘most vividly distinctive...in modern jazz’ (The Jazzmann).

As a pianist, he has been described as ‘remarkable...possessing staggering technical ability and a fecund imagination as both player and composer.’ Concerning his organ playing, critic Brian Morton recently commented that ‘[t]he most interesting Hammond player of the last decade and more, [Hawkins] has already extended what can be done on the instrument.’

He is a frequent solo performer, and also appears in groupings ranging from duo (with the likes of Evan Parker, John Surman, Han Bennink and Sofia Jernberg), via his co-led quartet with the vocalist Elaine Mitchener ('probably a new standard for improvised music with song', Jazzism), through to large ensembles ('Unit[e]...is a free-jazz masterpiece', Free Jazz). An in-demand sideman, Hawkins continues to be heard live and on record with vast array of contemporary leaders of all generations, including the likes of Evan Parker, John Surman, Joe McPhee, Mulatu Astatke, Wadada Leo Smith, Anthony Braxton, Marshall Allen, Han Bennink, Hamid Drake, Rob Mazurek, Taylor Ho Bynum, Harris Eisenstadt, Matana Roberts, and Shabaka Hutchings, amongst many others. He has also been noted for a number of years for his performances in the bands of legendary South African drummer, Louis Moholo-Moholo.

In 2012, he was chosen as a member of the first edition of the London Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Soundhub’ scheme for young composers. He has been commissioned by the BBC, as well as by festivals including the London Jazz Festival and the Cheltenham Jazz Festival. He was named 'Instrumentalist of the Year' in the 2016 Parliamentary Jazz Awards. In 2018, he was elected a fellow of the Civitella Ranieri. Concert appearances have taken him to major club, concert and festival stages worldwide.

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Album Review

Roberto Ottaviano: Eternal Love People

Read "Eternal Love People" reviewed by Giuseppe Segala


Fin dagli anni Ottanta, Roberto Ottaviano ha coltivato relazioni strette e feconde con la scena internazionale, particolarmente quella creativa europea. La stessa che proprio nel periodo precedente aveva sviluppato spinte notevoli, al punto da essere considerata trainante e prevalente pure dagli osservatori d'oltreoceano. Il musicista ha mantenuto e ravvivato questo rapporto, in particolare attraverso la collaborazione con Alexander Hawkins, senza dubbio la voce più dotata e consapevole tra i musicisti delle generazioni recenti che tengono legami con quella scena, oggi ...

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Album Review

Alexander Hawkins Trio With Neil Charles And Stephen Davis: Carnival Celestial

Read "Carnival Celestial" reviewed by Ian Patterson


The laws of probability dictate that if three musicians spend enough time together a trio recording will eventually arise. Pianist Alexander Hawkins, bassist Neil Charles and drummer Stephen Davis have clocked up many a road mile since forming in 2012. They have also recorded together in various settings, notably on the Alexander Hawkins/Elaine Mitchener album UpRoot (Intakt, 2017), with Anthony Braxton on Quartet (Standards) 2020 (New Braxton House, 2021) and on Alexander Hawkins/Mirror Cannon's Break a Vase (Intakt, 2022), which ...

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Album Review

Roberto Ottaviano, Alexander Hawkins: Charlie's Blue Skylight

Read "Charlie's Blue Skylight" reviewed by Neri Pollastri


Roberto Ottaviano non poteva non celebrare il centenario della nascita di Charles Mingus, uno dei musicisti che più ha influenzato la sua poetica e al quale già aveva già dedicato un lavoro con i suoi Six Mobiles, Mingus: Portrait in Six Colours, in occasione del decennale dalla scomparsa. Lo fa in formazione minima, assieme cioè in duo con Alexander Hawkins al pianoforte e al Fender Rhodes, proponendo undici composizioni mingusiane scelte tra le più e le meno famose, interpretate in ...

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Album Review

Angelika Niescier & Alexander Hawkins: Soul In Plain Sight

Read "Soul In Plain Sight" reviewed by John Sharpe


Some of pianist British Alexander Hawkins' most potent outings have been in the intimate duo setting. Think, for example, of Leaps In Leicester (Clean Feed, 2016) with Evan Parker or Shards And Constellations (Intakt, 2020) with cellist Tomeka Reid. To that list can be added this richly-detailed double act with the Polish-born, German-resident saxophonist Angelika Niescier. The set had its genesis in a meeting at the 2016 Berlin Jazz Festival where Hawkins had performed with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and ...

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Album Review

Angelika Niescier: Soul In Plain Sight

Read "Soul In Plain Sight" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


Saxophonist Angelika Niescier (Poland) and pianist Alexander Hawkins (UK) share mutual admiration amid a meeting at the Berlin Jazz Fest. As we fast forward to this duet outing by these increasingly prominent Euro improvisers who recast their respective goods here, think of Language A communicating with Language B, simply using the emotive aspects and non-verbal interactions with their instruments. Here, the output solidifies into a spiritual union of rapid interpretations, cunning contrasts, and orbital characteristics where spoken word really wouldn't ...

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Album Review

Alexander Hawkins / Mirror Canon: Break A Vase

Read "Break A Vase" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Pianist and composer Alexander Hawkins sequences the ten tracks of Break A Vase in a seemingly counterintuitive manner. The title track, which is taken from West Indian poet Derek Walcott's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, is not heard until track six; it is a solo piano performance which emulates Walcott's words, “Break a vase, and the love that re­assembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole." Hawkins' solo performance on grand ...

Album Review

Marco Colonna, Alexander Hawkins: Dolphy Underlined

Read "Dolphy Underlined" reviewed by Neri Pollastri


Li avevamo ascoltati e apprezzati dal vivo, ma su disco il prezioso lavoro che Marco Colonna e Alexander Hawkins effettuano sulla musica di Eric Dolphy emerge con ancora maggiore chiarezza. Dei due conosciamo bene le qualità individuali: pianista raffinato, sebbene spesso forse un po' astratto e cerebrale, Hawkins è senz'altro uno degli artisti europei oggi più interessanti; non meno raffinato e per giunta sempre accompagnato da una lucida capacità di raccontare, Colonna stupisce ogni volta per le capacità ...

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Recording

Francois Houle's, Alexander Hawkins' And Harris Eisenstadt's Collective Trio Will Release You Have Options On November 9 On Songlines

Francois Houle's, Alexander Hawkins' And Harris Eisenstadt's Collective Trio Will Release You Have Options On November 9 On Songlines

Source: GoMedia PR

This collective trio was born when the late (and greatly missed) Ken Pickering, co-founder and artistic director of Vancouver’s jazz festival, recommended Alexander Hawkins for the piano chair in a new Houle project for the 2014 festival. Houle already had Brooklyn-based fellow Canadian Harris Eisenstadt in mind—Harris had recently toured and recorded in his 5+1 project (Genera, Songlines 2012). And Eisenstadt and Hawkins had played together for years in the collective Convergence Quartet. The Oxford-based Hawkins however was unknown to ...

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Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Carnival Celestial

Intakt Records
2023

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Break A Vase

Intakt Records
2022

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Charlie's Blue...

Dodicilune
2022

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Togetherness Music...

Intakt Records
2021

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Soul In Plain Sight

Intakt Records
2021

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Elmoic

From: All There, Ever Out
By Alexander Hawkins

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