Alexander Hawkins

About the show

Alexander Hawkins is a composer, pianist, organist, and bandleader who is ‘unlike anything else in modern creative music’, described by Point of Departure as ‘an early 21st century pioneer…a musician with frightening resources’. Regarded as one of his generation's most innovative voices, his writing has been said to represent ‘a fundamental reassertion of composition within improvised music’, and his voice one of the ‘most vividly distinctive...in modern jazz’.

This is a first UK solo performance since the release of Song Unconditional (Intakt Records, 2025), his third solo release, following on from the acclaimed Iron Into Wind (Intakt Records, 2019) and Song Singular (Babel, 2014). Adam Shatz writes in the liner notes of 'marvels of compressed exploration...a vast, sophisticated, and deeply considered sound-world'.

In addition to his solo performances, he also appears in groupings of all sizes, from duos (with the likes of Nicole Mitchell, Sofia Jernberg, Tomeka Reid, Angelika Niescier, Evan Parker, John Surman, Han Bennink, and Hamid Drake) upwards. His Ensemble music, at the core of which often sits his long-standing trio featuring Neil Charles and Stephen Davis, was said by The Guardian newspaper to sound 'like all the future jazz you might imagine without ever being able to conceive of the details’, and Togetherness Music, released by Intakt Records in January 2021, has been called '[a] masterpiece that can stand next to the best works of Mitchell, Braxton or Parker’.

Hawkins can be heard live and on record with vast array of contemporary leaders of all generations, including the likes of Anthony Braxton, Joe McPhee, Wadada Leo Smith, Marshall Allen, Michael Formanek, Rob Mazurek, Chad Taylor, Taylor Ho Bynum, Harris Eisenstadt, Nicole Mitchell, Matana Roberts, Esperanza Spalding, Jonny Greenwood, and Shabaka Hutchings. For close to fifteen years, he was noted for his performances in the bands of the legendary South African drummer, Louis Moholo-Moholo. He has also toured for more than a decade with Ethio-jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke.

He has been widely commissioned, by the likes of the BBC, festivals such as the London and Berlin Jazz Festivals, venues such as the Pierre Boulez Saal, and contemporary music groups such as the Riot Ensemble. He was named 'Instrumentalist of the Year' in the 2016 Parliamentary Jazz Awards. In 2018, he was elected a fellow of the Civitella Ranieri. 

Concert appearances take him to major club, concert and festival stages worldwide.