The following is an interview between jazz journalist Morgan Enos and saxophonist Alex Hitchcock. His new album Letters from Afar, recorded with Dave Adewumi (trumpet), Lex Korten (piano and Fender Rhodes), Harish Raghavan (bass) and Jongkuk Kim (drums), was released on 27 September via New Soil. Links to purchase the album and to his website can be found at the end of this article.
London-born saxophonist and composer Alex Hitchcock has spent the past two years in Brooklyn, finding what he calls “my people and a community here.” In that time, he’s become a familiar presence on both sides of the Atlantic, equally at home in New York’s late-night sessions and London’s original-music circles. He is now preparing to move back to London. His new album Letters from Afar captures that period of discovery and reflection between two worlds.
“Within parts of the musician community, leaving New York can be seen as a fate worse than death,” Hitchcock says. “The city really sees itself as the centre of global culture-making, and it’s hard not to get swept up in that and maintain a kind of critical perspective on it, even when you’re inside it. I didn’t have a particularly critical perspective before I arrived; now I do.”
Letters from Afar distils that shift in perspective; it’s the sound of an artist shaped by New York’s intensity and returning home with a clearer sense of purpose. “I’m genuinely excited to be going back,” he adds, “but also sad to be leaving.”
Read on for our conversation about Hitchcock’s life between London and Brooklyn, and the lessons he’s drawn from both scenes.
UKJN: Who are your saxophone touchstones? Where do you come from, lineage-wise?
Alex Hitchcock: It’s been changing recently. I’ve lived all my life, apart from the last two years, in the UK – so the people I checked out were the ones with a bigger profile there, that modern lineage of tenor playing: Chris Potter, Mark Turner, Ben Wendel, Walter Smith. Joshua Redman was a big early one for me, and so was Coleman Hawkins – a bit different from the others. In the last couple of years it’s shifted more to musicians not just on saxophone, though Caroline Davis is, and also Peter Evans and Matt Mitchell. I’m consciously influenced by how they play and write.
UKJN: Take me through leaving New York – the obvious question.
AH: I’d prefer people to express sadness that I’m leaving, but it’s hard to hear. I really feel like I’ve found my people and a community here, which has been great. I’ve loved the musicians and the music scene, but politically it’s kind of tough.
The immediate reason is my wife’s career. We lived apart for a year when she moved here first, and I don’t want to do that again. My visa runs to the end of next year, so I’ll be back for gigs in April and a little tour, but for living I’ll be back in the UK. While I’ve been here I’ve gone back to Europe pretty much every month for gigs, so I’ll do that in reverse: live in London, come here a lot, and benefit from being able to afford to live.
UKJN: How long have you two been together?
AH: Three years married, together for twelve. I’ve always been travelling, so we’re used to spending time apart, but a year in a different time zone is tough for communication. I’m genuinely excited to be going back [home], but also sad to be leaving – it’s genuinely both.
UKJN: Give me a snapshot of the London scene in 2025.
AH: With the caveat I haven’t lived there for two years: there’s a great free scene, historically populated by slightly older musicians, now welcoming a younger cohort: guitarist Tara Cunningham, bassist Caius Williams. Alexander Hawkins is kind of in between generations.
Then there’s the South London scene, supported, though not exclusively, by Tomorrow’s Warriors. I read Shirley Tetteh saying, “We’re not American, so we’re not seeking to make a facsimile of American music.” It’s more like diaspora-focused music, combining with Afrobeat to get bands like Ezra Collective that originally came out of that and are now on another thing altogether. There’s also a really strong straight-ahead scene.
The other part is the one I was in – writing original music influenced equally by the US and European jazz: a specific London mix of both.
UKJN: How does that compare to New York?
AH: In London, the strata are pretty strongly demarcated, but there’s mutual respect. There are musicians who traverse between sections seamlessly; I’m thinking trumpet players James Copus and Mark Kavuma, people like that.
Spending time here made me focus more on what I want and like, because the scene here demands that of you. It wants to know what you are, what you think is important, what you’re working really hard on. Also, maybe because it’s so tough economically, there’s a lot of solidarity: people checking out each other’s gigs, making opportunities for each other. New York can have a reputation from the outside for not being welcoming, but that hasn’t been my experience at all. I’ve found it incredibly welcoming musically.
UKJN: Shabaka Hutchings has been pivotal over there. How do you see his place in the lineage?
AH: Shabaka was a much-beloved, ubiquitous figure in London, doing a lot of different stuff for years before the big, recent rise. What’s impressive is the uncompromising way he’s done it: framed by others as jazz, but not sounding like US jazz.
Jazz heavily influenced by the US but made outside can risk sounding like a bad copy; he leaned into his own heritage and experience as a Brit. There was a certain amount of jealousy from some corners when he started having his moment, but he stayed focussed on being a product of where he’s from. If you go down the road of thinking about imperialism and colonialism, why would you directly replicate music that’s been PR’d over from the US? That’s not to say he doesn’t care about the Black American tradition, he’s just not copying it.
UKJN: You mentioned a strong free scene in London. How “out” are you playing these days?
AH: Increasingly more. There’s an incredibly high bar of entry to playing free – the lineage, the context, why what’s being played is being played – but musicians here have been super encouraging of me to dive in, and that’s affected my playing across the board. I did a recording in August that was five hours long. I was playing the whole time while about fifteen musicians I’ve become close to here rotated in and out of a sextet, playing an hour each, staggered. One pianist would finish and be replaced by another while the rest kept playing. It was a proof-of-concept of some of the things I’ve been thinking about: sharing, giving up creative control over where the music goes.
UKJN: Where does André 3000 sit in the “spiritual jazz” conversation that Hutchings nominally belongs to?
AH: It’s very rare that artists describe themselves using those words. With André 3000 and the flute album, people’s beef, as I understand it, was that he was treading on terrain as an interloper who hadn’t done the work in that tradition. I’m sympathetic to another view.
I respect André 3000’s artistry; he’s done the work in another area of Black American music. So, as long as he finds willing collaborators, I kind of think it’s okay. It might be more of a recognition problem than an artist problem – there’s other free music of that nature that’s been around for a while and hasn’t been recognised the way it should.
UKJN: You said living here shifted your frame of reference. How so?
AH: Being inside New York has given me more perspective on what it’s like to be outside, and the way US jazz, Black American music, is marketed to the rest of the world, and what that serves. I’ve been investigating that historically. Jazz got held up by the US government as proof of integration and equality – they sent Louis Armstrong to Africa during the Cold War – which is so at odds with the experience of the people who made the music.
You don’t have to write a suite called “racism is bad”; it’s more how you structure your music, how you give up control, how you take responsibility for the parameters you set. Not emulating a democratic structure, but writing things that exist to be pulled apart from inside.
UKJN: What’s next on your calendar?
AH: I’m leaving next week, but not straight back to the UK – I’m going via New Zealand and Australia. I co-lead a group with Myele Manzanza (drums), Maria Chiara Argirò (keys), and Michelangelo Scandroglio (bass). Thanks to Myele’s NZ connection we’re playing Wellington Jazz Festival, somewhere in Christchurch, and a couple of Australian festivals. Then I’m taking my band to Portugal for a residency at Guimarães Jazz Festival. After that it’s London Jazz Festival, involving lots of different projects, including my quartet (the one I’m taking to Portugal) and a free trio with Robert Mitchell (piano) and Midori Jaeger (cello/voice).
UKJN: Where can people hear you on record next?
AH: I just had a record out at the end of September – Letters from Afar – recorded here, on UK-based label New Soil. We did two album launches last week: Nublu in New York and Ronnie Scott’s in London.
UKJN: How was Ronnie’s?
AH: I said on the mic: I’ve seen Benny Golson there, Johnny Griffin, Esperanza Spalding in her early days playing bass with Joe Lovano. That room’s got amazing history, and I’ve been going since I was about 14. I’ve played Ronnie’s a lot, but this was the first time doing a sold-out main-room show with my own group, presenting music from an album. The vibe was really good. The band didn’t compromise on what we wanted to play, and we still held that Ronnie’s audience, which isn’t always easy.
UKJN: Anything we didn’t cover that the reader should know?
AH: Just that New York has been incredibly welcoming musically for me. That’s important to say. It’s made me think more critically about the place, the country, and what the music is doing politically.
