UK Jazz News

Alex Hitchcock – new album ‘Dream Band’

Live in London

Alex Hitchcock (centre) with Alex Ridout and Orlando le Fleming. Photo credit Steven Cropper/transientlife

Rising-star tenor saxophonist and composer Alex Hitchcock recently released ‘Dream Band: Live in London’ (Whirlwind Recordings), a triple album which documents three different bands led by him across consecutive nights at the Vortex.

UKJazz News: First off- the record sounds fantastic. What made you want to do a live recording rather than go into the studio with these bands? 

Alex Hitchcock: It was a few things- my first record, ‘Live at the London and Cambridge Jazz Festivals’ was a live recording which we did back in 2017. That was the first band I had and I’ve always wanted to do another one. It was a case of getting everybody together on three consecutive nights and wanting to get that spontaneity, the reactivity. Capturing the audience vibe in the room is really important. It’s an interesting way to make a record- I thought of new combinations of people that I hadn’t worked with in the same band before, but also included some established combinations like Lewis [Wright] and Kit [Downes]. I wanted to get a real mix. I thought if we played the music once on the day and then recorded it live then it would feel super fresh. 

UKJN: What are some of your favourite live albums and did any of them have a direct inspiration on you? 

AH: A lot of my favourite albums are live albums! I’m not sure any of them were directly inspiring, more just the concept of a live album. Like that Wes Montgomery album ‘Smoking at the Half Note’ where you can literally hear the club’s phone ringing and that’s a part of the fabric of the recording. Similarly, there’s a Joshua Redman one at the Village Vanguard [Spirit of the Moment] and you can hear the audience reacting to it and how that really shapes the music. I listen back to the recording from the Vortex and I can hear Rachael Cohen shouting, I can hear Myele Manzanza shouting, and I was asking Sonny Johns who mixed and recorded it to keep those bits in and not try to get rid of them. It feels quite ‘London’ in that sense- there are a lot of London musicians in the audience. 

UKJN: Why the Vortex? 

AH: It’s such a special room to play in, especially when it’s packed. It’s a combination of a very listening audience but also a very enthusiastic and often quite vocally supportive audience. It made sense as a venue to capture that live vibe. The option of recording up against the side wall meant we almost had the gig in the round- that helped to create a better atmosphere because the audience were so close to the band and as a musician you’re feeding off the energy of that. 

UKJN: Where does the name ‘Dream Band’ come from? Is it just because you’ve put together 3 bands of your favourite musicians, or is there another layer to it? The music often sounds quite dreamy, especially the band with Liselotte Östblom and Rob Luft

AH: That’s not a coincidence- it’s something that came out of recording the music for the first ‘Dream Band’ album [which came out in 2021]. I think listening back to some of that music after we’d mixed and mastered it, it did have that slight ethereal quality, particularly the way Midori Jaeger played on cello. It’s exactly the same on this album, particularly the band with Liselotte and Rob- I was really pleased with how that group came out in terms of the texture and the sound world. I tried to get that abstract, surreal sense to come across in the album art as well. I wanted to undercut any sentimentality in the idea of ‘dream band’ by having all these multiple possible dream bands- there are infinite combinations you could make of the musicians we are surrounded by. I’m not arguing that there’s one ultimate dream band! 

UKJN:What did you have in mind when you chose these combinations of musicians? 

AH: Some of it was about trying new combinations- for example I’d played with Mark Kavuma and Rob Luft separately, but I’d never heard them together before and I thought that would be really interesting. There are some combinations who know each other well, like Rio [Kai] and Jamie [Murray], Orlando [le Fleming] and James [Maddren], me and James Copus– we go back ages! It was also partly just when I was writing- I was allowing myself to think of people who I knew and whose playing I really loved, which dictated a lot of the music. I was composing all the material pretty strictly with specific musicians in mind. Because you’re asking quite a lot of people by getting them to perform music that they’ve only rehearsed once that day. You trust them, and you want to write things that you hope will stretch them and that they’ll feel excited by playing.  

UKJN: Do you have plans for more with any of these bands, or do you think you’d do another album with the ‘Dream Band’ concept? 

AH: I definitely want to do another record in the series and I think it would be a studio recording. I’ve got in mind that the next one will be with just one band, and it might be a US iteration because I’m going to be spending some time there over the next year. The concept is always different combinations of musicians that I haven’t had on these albums before, so I wouldn’t do it with a band I’d already recorded, it would be a new one. 


Share this article:

Advertisements

Post a comment...

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Wednesday Morning Headlines

Receive our weekly email newsletter with Jazz updates from London and beyond.

Wednesday Breakfast Headlines

Sign up to receive our weekly newsletter