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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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What is Jazz?

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Interview

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Album Review

The Comet Is Coming: Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam

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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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Album Review

Shabaka: Afrikan Culture

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It would be easy to mislay one's critical faculties when it comes to Shabaka Hutchings. The tenor saxophonist and clarinetist has since 2015 so invigorated the British jazz scene and, more recently, the international one, while eloquently articulating the potential of Afrikan cosmological thinking to realign the disorders of the modern industrial world, that the gravitational pull is powerful. Hutchings is the centrifugal force in three high-voltage bands: Sons of Kemet, The Comet Is Coming and the ...

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Album Review

Alexander Hawkins / Mirror Canon: Break A Vase

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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 ...

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“Shabaka Hutchings is going places.” The Guardian

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Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

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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We Are Sent Here by...

Impulse! Records
2020

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