My End Of Year Honours List

Not that anyone asked me, but I used to ask myself this question…”Where does your music come from?” I’ve noticed that there’s a kind of trend at the moment towards thinking it simply springs out, fully formed like a little poop of art. People get inspired by “the world around them”, their mates…another smiling instagram interviewee, the sun streaming in through the generously proportioned French windows of a hired room. The temptation to become an influencer/musician hybrid must be immense these days, with regular gigs paying roughly what they did twenty years ago. I get it. And I suppose I’m in a privileged position of, while not really surviving on what I earn, at least my age, amongst other things, means I will never have to use my image to survive.

Still, it would be nice to credit the fact that as musicians, we are constantly stealing, copying, regurgitating so that the newer audience can hear afresh what has been in circulation for decades. That’s all fine, it’s not all about being fresh and new, or about inventing something. It’s mostly about community, about the experience of a collective creative space, both as listener and as a musician. I would like to see two things change.

First, when you release your album, EP, YouTube video, I would like to know…who the other people are. That is the lifeblood of the music, the way people make other connections, listen more widely. I don’t know if record companies or management think this is somehow bad for the image of their artists, but it’s a rude and arrogant way to treat your audience.

Secondly, acknowledge your influences. It doesn’t have to be “the elders”, although many of them will be. Forget about fashion, be honest, do your research, find out where this stuff came from. Jazz is over a hundred years old now, the genetic variation with each generation grows ever wider: you may think you don’t like Bill Evans, but if you like Herbie Hancock or Brad Meldhau you are consuming his music by proxy. For the endless genres (if you must define them) that have been drawn into jazz, and vice versa, the history is even longer.

So, in the interest of setting an example, here’s a list of musicians that have inspired me, a list I’ve been gradually adding to over the past couple of days. There are greats, more recent discoveries, students of mine, both past and current, and people I’ve been lucky enough to work with. There are probably people you’ve never heard of…I hadn’t either. I’ve left a lot of people out, I’m sure. I could probably do another one of these lists, just as long, by tomorrow. If someone is really famous and not in there, it might mean that I’m not into them. That’s OK too, those strange gaps and lapses in taste can make a person. So here’s my end of year list, my little league table where everyone comes in first because everyone on it has made me think about what I’m doing. And whether it is me, in fact, who is doing it, or a kind of musical Jungian collective unconscious at work.

Merry Christmas xx

In carefully scripted order of no importance:

Scott Joplin

Beethoven

Jelly Roll Morton

Ronald Shannon Jackson

Sly and the Family Stone

Fela Kuti

Edward Grieg

Keith Jarrett

Tom Rainey

Isaac Hayes

Bill Frisell

Julian Siegel

Donald Fagen

Duke Ellington

Prince

Baby Dodds

Geoff Simkins

Count Basie

Charles Mingus

Mark Lockheart

Wayne Horvitz

Walter Becker

Louis Armstrong 

Bobby Previte

Gerald Cleaver

Bobby Wellins

Anita Baker

Will Glaser

Matthew Herd

Christine Tobin

John Zorn

Paul Clarvis

Earl Hines

Dave Grusin 

Cecil TaylorChris Biscoe

Hampton Hawes

Carmen McRae

Alcyona Mick

Tim Berne

Bobby Womack

John Abercrombie

Laurie Anderson

Mulatu Astatke

Lauren Kinsella

Phil Robson

Dizzee Rascal

Izumi Kimura

Seb Rochford

George Benson

Igor Stravinsky

Bob James

Phil Minton

OutKast

Veryan Weston 

Shirley Horn

Jeanne Lee

Wayne Shorter

Chris Batchelor

Ms Dynamite 

Sonny Stitt

Joe Zawinul

Omar Hakim

Andrew Cyrille 

Evan Parker

John Scofield

Carla Bley

Steve Swallow

Arto Lindsay

Jo Kondo

Melvin Gibbs

Annette Peacock

Morton Feldman

Bill Dixon 

Missy Elliott

Federic Mompou

Béla Bartók

Sonny Rollins

MF Doom

Richard Strauss

Karol Szymanowski

Paul Bley

Tom Herbert

Steve Kühn

Anton Webern

Bud Powell

Toru Takemitsu

Jan Garbarek

Carmen McRae

Pat Metheney

John Cage

Okkyung Lee

Giovanni Palestrina

Ralph Towner

Sergei Prokofiev

Ockeghem 

Fred Frith

Elliot Galvin

Orlando Gibbons

Harry Beckett

Billy Higgins 

Josquin Des Prez

Ed Blackwell

PJ Harvey

Julius Hemphill

JS Bach

Steve Reich

Philip Glass

Maximo Park

Henry Threadgill 

Anthony Braxton

Joni Mitchell

Robin Holcomb

Michael Brecker

Jack de Johnette

Alex Paxton

Steve Lacy

Horace Silver

Dave Holland

Miles Davis

Dave Liebman

Elvin Jones 

Thelonious Monk

Tom O’Brien

Bern Nix

Alexander Schlippenbach

Misha Mengleberg

Joey Baron

Ornette Coleman

Aphex Twin

Paul Motian

Hudson Mohawke

Hank Mobely

John Coltrane

Hank Jones

Roland Kirk

Big Thief

Gillian Welch

Alex Maguire

Talking Heads

Ava Mendoza

Herbie Hancock

Joao Gilberto

Ingrid Laubrock

Conlon Nancarrow

Kenny Wheeler

Blossom Dearie

Oumou Sangare

Marc Ducret

Leonard Bernstein

Ali Farka Touré

Glenn Gould

Busta Rhymes

Mandhira Da Saram

Booker Little

Gerry Hemingway 

HariprasadChaurasia

Mark Helias

David Torn

Eddie Harris 

Les McCann

Nancy Wilson

György Kurtág

Anita Wardell

Drew Gress

Baka Pygmies

György Ligeti

Mal Waldron

Jim Black

Billie Holliday

John Martyn

Marilyn Crispell

Simon Purcell

Eric Dolphy

Norma Winstone

Chaka Khan

George Adams

Matana Roberts

Chris Speed

Ray Nance

Don Pullen

Laura Jurd

Julius Eastman

Jaki Byard

Nikki Illes

The Beat

Dave Brubeck 

Gil Evans

Roland Hanna

Herbie Nichols

Stan Sulzmann

The Specials

Madness 

Dannie Richmond

The Selecter

John Adams

Queen

Rainbow

Led Zeppelin

Gnawa 

Gagaku 

Katy Perry

Elliot Galvin

Charlie Parker

John Edwards

Stockhausen

Byron Wallen

George Russell

Tara Cunningham

Art Blakey

Coleman Hawkins

John Taylor

Field Music

Mississippi Fred MacDowell

Son House

Imperial Court Music of Uganda

Zoot Sims 

Lester Young

Mark Sanders

Lester Bowie

Robert Schumann

Claude Debussy

Andrew Hill

Arthur Blythe 

Maurice Ravel

XTC

Fats Domino

Lee Konitz

Peggy Lee

Peggy Lee

GF Handel

Henri Dutilleux

Fats Waller

Eugene Chadbourne

Burt Bacharach

Dionne Warwick 

Tony Williams