Trish Clowes and her band My Iris – from left, Ross Stanley, Chris Montague and James Maddren (photo: Brian Homer).

Trish Clowes at Jazz Hastings

Jazz Hastings presents saxophonist and composer Trish Clowes, and her band My Iris, at their gig on Tuesday 5 April. Julian Norridge describes her illustrious CV.

British saxophonist and composer Trish Clowes has been described by John Fordham in The Guardian as “one of the most agile and original jugglers of improv and adventurous composition to have appeared in the UK in recent times”.

Clowes was a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist from 2012-14, during which time she was commissioned to write for the BBC Concert Orchestra, a piece that won her a British Composer Award in 2015. She has recorded six critically acclaimed albums,  and has a seventh due for release in April.

Clowes’ band My Iris – with Chris Montague on guitar, Ross Stanley on piano and organ and James Maddren on drums – represents the front rank of the contemporary UK jazz scene and has been hailed as “the jazz of the future” (Augsburger Allgemeine).

Photo: Rose Hendry.

Born in 1984, Clowes was raised in Shrewsbury before moving to London in 2003 to study at the Royal Academy of Music – she was later honoured as an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (2013). She holds a PhD in Musical Composition, awarded by Birmingham City University (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire) in 2020 and teaches regularly at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.

Notable career performances include the Barbican, Toronto Jazz Festival, Rochester International Jazz Festival, Royal Festival Hall, Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, Wigmore Hall (where she is currently an Associate Artist), Celtic Connections (with BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra), Women in (e)motion Festival (Germany), National Opera House (Ireland) and Galway Jazz Festival. She has also appeared on BBC 2 Proms Extra and BBC Radio 3.

Recent commissions include writing for the London Sinfonietta (a Sinfonietta Short for solo bass, and their Sound Out projects) and BBC Radio 3 (BBC Postcards from Composers and BBC Concert Orchestra).

Her band My Iris is an intense and thrilling quartet. Clowes provides her bandmates with a unique platform for individual expression, delivering driving grooves and lingering melodic lines, seamlessly morphing between earthy restlessness and futuristic landscapes. All About Jazz recently described one of her solos as something “that Lester Young or Ben Webster would have been proud of.”

Trish Clowes and My Iris Jazz Hastings, Tuesday 5 February, East Hastings Sea Angling Association (on the Stade behind the lifeboat station). Doors open 7.45pm for 8.30 start, tickets £10 on the door.

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