Trevor Hodgett, Author at Jazz Journal

Emily Saunders: ‘For me, technique is freedom’

Trevor Hodgett — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 13:51:14 +0000

“The essence of me is writing songs and expressing experiences or what I see around me and just trying to spread some happiness,” declares London singer Emily Saunders. Certainly songs like Blue Skies Forever and All As One on her current CD Moon Shifts Oceans are wonderfully uplifting. The album is a resounding creative triumph, but […]

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Art Themen: ‘I wouldn’t be interested in being a backing musician for Adele’

Trevor Hodgett — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 20:09:26 +0000

“I don’t rate myself,” asserts saxophonist Art Themen. “I’m just a jobbing musician who’s been very, very lucky.” It’s an astounding statement, for Themen, whose career began in the early 60s, is a luminary of British jazz. Live In Soho, his current CD with the Art Themen Organ Trio, which also features Pete Whittaker (organ) […]

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Sean Khan: ‘Jazz is full of little cliques, and musicians are not the nicest people’

Trevor Hodgett — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 11:49:31 +0000

London saxophonist and flautist Sean Khan has been much acclaimed for albums such as Palmares Fantasy, a 2018 collaboration with Hermeto Pascoal, 2021’s Supreme Love: A Journey Through Coltrane and this year’s Sean Khan Presents The Modern Jazz And Folk Ensemble Volume 1, on which he reinvents tracks originally recorded by British folk artists of […]

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Samara Joy: ‘I didn’t start singing to become a jazz superstar’

Trevor Hodgett — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 12:42:13 +0000

“It was terrible! The nerves! I was so nervous! So, so nervous!” exclaims New York singer Samara Joy of her first visit to the Grammys in 2023, when she won Best Jazz Vocal Album for her second album Linger Awhile and Best New Artist. “It was really overwhelming because I’m not part of that Hollywood […]

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Lizz Wright: looking back

Trevor Hodgett — Sun, 14 Apr 2024 21:01:00 +0000

The southern-states singer talks about her family, including the preacher father who wanted her to marry someone like him

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Brilliant Corners festival, Belfast

Trevor Hodgett — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 11:47:23 +0000

The 2024 edition included Seb Rochford, Zoe Rahman, Luke Bacchus, Tom Ollendorff, AKU! and John Donegan's Irish Sextet

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Dave Quincy, English jazz-rock pioneer

Trevor Hodgett — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 10:01:00 +0000

The saxophonist and writer for the jazz-rock bands If and Zzebra, now 84, reckons he's at last playing as well as he always wanted to

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Emma Rawicz: in the middle of somewhere

Trevor Hodgett — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 10:02:00 +0000

She might have grown up in rural Devon but the virtuoso saxophone playing of Emma Rawicz has put her at centre of metropolitan attention

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Alex Hitchcock: making connections

Trevor Hodgett — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 12:16:03 +0000

One of the tracks on saxophonist Hitchcock's new album is the Brexit-inspired Cakeism, written when he sought unity in a time of division

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Meilana Gillard – a story to tell

Trevor Hodgett — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 11:01:00 +0000

The saxophonist's variety of addresses over the years - London, Ohio, New York and Belfast - seems to be reflected in her broad view of jazz

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