Xhosa Cole back on Jazz Hastings stage

Brilliant young saxophonist Xhosa Cole will be making a welcome return to Jazz Hastings on Tuesday 14 March – and this time he’ll be appearing with a special guest, a bona fide New York tap dancer, writes Julian Norridge.

Xhosa recently featured as the cover star of a Guardian article about the six brilliant young musicians who are transforming the UK jazz scene. He first came to prominence as the BBC Young Jazz Musician in 2018. Since then he has received the Parliamentary Jazz Award for Best Newcomer in 2020 and was named as Jazz FM’s Breakthrough Act of the Year. At just 26, he has already performed twice at the BBC Proms.

For this session he’ll be appearing with his latest quartet, who are all Birmingham-based. They feature composer and improviser Steve Saunders on guitar, Josh Vadiveloo on double bass and Nathan England Jones on drums. Together they have performed at such prestigious venues as Ronnie Scott’s, the Pizza Express Jazz Club in Soho and both the Manchester and Edinburgh Jazz Festivals.

For Jazz Hastings they’ll be performing their new project Rhythm-a-ting, in which they explore contemporary arrangements of the music of Thelonious Monk. Energetic and filled with humour, they are trying to reconnect jazz with tap-dance with the help of Harlem-based singer and dancer Liberty Styles, who will be on stage with them. It’s perfect music for a live setting.

Xhosa Cole has been playing the saxophone since he was 12. Brought up in inner city Handsworth, he is an embodiment of the success of numerous community arts programmes in Birmingham, including the Midland Youth Jazz Orchestra, Jazzlines Ensemble and Birmingham Music Service. He is also a flautist and a teacher.

He has now expanded his career to include recording and composing. His debut album K(no)w Them, K(no)w Us was critically acclaimed and his second, Ibeji, was released late last year. It features a series of disparate saxophone and percussion duets with a series of different percussionists. Xhosa is developing a fiercely unique and independent voice.

Xhosa Cole Quartet with Liberty Styles Jazz Hastings, Tuesday 14 March, East Hastings Sea Angling Association (on the Stade behind the lifeboat station). Doors open 7.45pm for 8.30 start, tickets £15 on the door.

Also in: Music & Sound