Richard Olatunde Baker: drums

"Born and raised in the UK of English-Nigerian parentage, I grew up listening to mostly African music and later developed a strong interest in various experimental / avant garde genres.

My musical journey began aged 11, as a self-taught guitarist, although I naturally gravitated towards drums during my early twenties. I was lucky to be trained by traditional Yoruba talking drum masters, many of whom featured on the records I'd listened to as a youth. I also worked with many other African Pro-percussionists in the 1990's. My drumming foundations are firmly rooted in playing frequently at all-night African community events and in African Theatre in the UK.

Notably, I'm an accomplished studio engineer/producer, having originally trained at London's old Matrix Studios network.

I gained priceless experience working with a wide array of top engineers, producers and major artists from around the world.

All my studio work is now freelance. In the current climate I now offer remote recording sessions.

I dedicate my working life to my two main passions: African Drumming and Music Technology, both of which I teach regularly. Artists I've worked with include" Tony Allen, Mulatu Astatke, Seun Kuti, Sting, Mark de Clive-Lowe, Natty, to name a few.

I love to perform, record, travel and share my enthusiasm with others."

"Neil Charles is a bassist, electronic producer and composer. He regularly performs, records and tours with numerous jazz, classical and contemporary music bands and ensembles like alex Hawkins, mingus big band, has played with Terence Blanchard, black top and is a member of the electro-acoustic jazz trio, Zed-U."

Stephen Davis is an Irish-born, Belfast-based jazz/free-improv drummer and composer.

"Otto Fischer is a guitarist and songwriter based in Oxford, London, New York, and Lagos. Admired by Derek Bailey, his first album was released on Bailey's Incus label."

"Alexander Hawkins is a composer, pianist, organist, and bandleader who is 'unlike anything else in modern creative music' (Ni Kantu) and whose recent work has reached a 'dazzling new apex' (Downbeat). A largely self-taught improviser, he works in a vast array of creative contexts. His own highly distinctive soundworld is forged through the search to reconcile both his love of free improvisation and profound fascination with composition and structure. In 2012, he was chosen as a member of the first edition of the London Symphony Orchestra's 'Soundhub' scheme for young composers. He also received a major BBC commission in late 2012 for a fifty minute composition: One Tree Found was first performed and broadcast in March 2013, and was subsequently performed and broadcast for the WDR in Cologne (2014). He has also twice been commissioned by the London Jazz Festival (once as composer, once as an arranger), and by the Cheltenham Jazz Festival (2016).

An in-demand sideman, Hawkins continues to be heard live and on record with vast array of contemporary leaders of all generations, including the likes of Evan Parker, John Surman, Joe McPhee, Mulatu Astatke, Wadada Leo Smith, Anthony Braxton, Marshall Allen, Rob Mazurek, Taylor Ho Bynum, and Harris Eisenstadt, amongst many others. He has also been noted in recent years for his performances in the bands of legendary South African drummer, Louis Moholo-Moholo. Concert appearances have taken him to club, concert and festival stages worldwide."

"Shabaka Hutchings, a saxophonist, band leader and composer, part of London's community of younger jazz musicians as well as the city's thriving improvised music scene. For Hutchings, composition is a chronicle of the zeitgeist inhabited by a composer; an exposition of his or her search for meaning and the structuring of experiences in aid of recognising this meaning when it appears.

As part of the Caribbean diaspora, he sees his role as that of pushing the boundaries of what musical elements are considered to be Caribbean. Constantly evaluating the nature of his relationship with musical material and tradition, he describes his attempts at composition as wrestling matches with questions of where and how the Caribbean can be encoded, and what happens when it is exposed to the western classical music cannon.

Hutchings was born in 1984 in London. He moved to Barbados at the age of six, began studying classical clarinet aged nine and remained until sixteen. Shabaka's primary project is the group Sons of Kemet, which won the 2013 MOBO Award for Jazz Act of the Year. In June 2014 Shabaka was invited to join the Sun Ra Arkestra, performing with them and recording a session for BBC Radio 3. He has performed and recorded with Courtney Pine's Jazz Warriors, Mulatu Astatke and the Heliocentrics, Polar Bear and Soweto Kinch. Some of the many notable musicians he has shared the stage with include Jack DeJohnette, Charlie Haden and the Liberation Music Orchestra, Louis Moholo, Evan Parker, King Sunny Ade and Orlando Julius to name a few.

In 2010 Shabaka was granted the title of BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist which allowed him to undertake numerous commissions, as well as broadcast performances on radio. These included performances with Julian Joseph, the BBC Big Band, and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (with whom he performed the Copland Clarinet Concerto in the Wales Millennium Centre). In 2012 he was commissioned to write a piece for the BBC Concert Orchestra which included members his own group (Sons of Kemet) and electronic musicians Leafcutter John and Jason Singh. This concert was received to critical praise at the South Bank's Queen Elizabeth Hall. In July 2013 Shabaka was commissioned by Leasowes Bank Music Festival to write a piece for clarinet and string quartet. He performed this piece with the Ligeti String Quartet to rave reviews (the Birmingham Post giving the concert 5 stars). Shabaka was nominated for Jazz Musician of the Year 2013 in the Parliamentary Jazz Awards. Shabaka was a recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Composer Award 2014 and the winner of the Jazz FM Instrumentalist of the Year 2015. Earlier in 2015, Shabaka also received a commission from the London Sinfonietta to write a 'note to the new government' and was Associate Artist for the Spittalfields Summer Festival. The second Sons of Kemet album, 'Lest we forget what we came here to do' was released in September 2015 on NAIM and the trio project, The Comet is Coming, featuring Shabaka, Dan Leavers, and Max Hallett, released it's first EP on Leaf Label in october 2015."