I was very pleased to be asked to find a selection of music that I have been involved closely with over many years, and for it to appear on The Wire website and to be able to explain why these choices were made. I turned 80 this year, and somehow it felt quite significant to be asked to take stock, as it were, of my career and various involvements with other musicians. In some ways it’s a fairly random choice, as I could easily have selected a completely different set of recordings. But here goes…

John Stevens and Paul Rutherford were there right at the beginning. We met in the RAF School Of Music in Uxbridge on day one of our stint in Her Majesty’s RAF music services in 1960. I had come down from Halifax in Yorkshire, Paul from Blackheath and John from Brentford, London. Complete coincidence. We were even billeted in the same room. However, John and Paul asked if I wouldn’t mind moving so they could have another London mate in the room with them. Yes, that’s how it was. So I slightly grumpily said, OK I don’t mind as long as you help me with my gear. And so they did.

We soon found out that all our interests coincided through the love of jazz music, and we started to play together and with others of the same interest, and continued throughout our whole stint in the RAF. We were all interested in the latest developments in jazz and it was there that lots of seeds were sown. We appreciated Coltrane, Dolphy and Ornette amongst many others and that kind of player we used as our role models, but never forgot the great things that came before like Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, Charlie Mingus, etc, and this all helped the development of our music.

So the first track I have chosen, called “Ed’s Message”, was selected not only because I wrote it, but as a tribute to the late, great Eric Dolphy, a big influence on me, and it was one of the tunes I contributed to the early SME in 1965. It featured on our very first LP Challenge. John had befriended the Royal Academy artist Geoff Rigden who agreed we could use a painting of his as the cover artwork, and the LP was recorded by Eddie Kramer, who recorded quite a few of our LPs. He went on to organise Electric Ladyland studios in the USA and record many of Jimi Hendrix’s finest albums.

“Tales Of Sadness” was a recording that featured my group Amalgam, which began originally with Barry Guy and Paul Rutherford. I eventually kept that group as more of a direct link to the type of improvisation that was influenced by players like Albert Ayler and all the previously mentioned musicians. John Stevens was also a major part of that group as well as The SME, which eventually became a more abstract form of the music we were involved with. These groups reflected our desire to forge brand new directions within a jazz frame, and were also instrumental in bringing about what now is called Improvised Music. A lot of the language used currently in improvised music all around the world comes from that source. The SME’s musical influences included Japanese Gagaku music amongst other things, as nothing is developed within isolation.

“Dynamics Of The Impromptu” is a good example of what was happening at the Little Theatre Club in London around that time with The SME. Derek would play solo and then John and I would play a duo set and then we’d all play together. John and I at that time were starting to develop his concept of what we called the small music. Very pointillistic and non linear, and you can hear this in the trio performances.

“Chip” is by a short-lived group which I called The Trevor Watts String Ensemble from the Cynosure CD and coincided with the time I first started to play with drummer Liam Genockey.

At the same time the track “Jive” was recorded by the very first Amalgam group completely under my control and included Liam and American guitarist Steve Hayton, and was a musical turning point for me, as I began to define more so my own personal choices.

Another good but different example is “Dear Roland”. The group by then featured a very young and talented bass guitarist called Colin McKenzie. I have included this track because it straddles the rock and funk feels we were utilising, coupled with the more abstract nature I was still involved in experimenting with.

“Medication” is an early composition of mine and features the short lived Trevor Watts Universal Music Group. It always interested me to put together musicians of very different musical persuasions and this group came out of a British Council sponsored week at Berlin’s Flöz Club, where I was able to select musicians to play there for a week. So I picked ten musicians. Lol Coxhill, Ray Warleigh, Howard Riley, Larry Stabbins, Liam Genockey, Keith Tippett, Barry Guy, Harry Miller etc. Every night I gave each musician a completely open choice as to what they wanted to do. That’s when Keith Tippett and Howard Riley first started to play together.

“War Dance” is from the box set Wipe Out, originally on Impetus and recorded in 1979, and features Keith Rowe from AMM. I deliberately asked Keith to join Amalgam after hearing him play at a session that drummer Eddie Prévost put together, which I also played in, at New Merlins Cave in London. For me he added the missing link to the then Amalgam Trio of Colin McKenzie, Liam Genockey, and it and worked as well or even better than I imagined it would do.

“Moire Music 2” was one of the compositions I wrote for the new Trevor Watts Moire Music ten-piece group which was a big hit at the Bracknell Jazz Festival in 1982.

“Themes For America No 2”, written for a different version of Moire Music, included a young Lianne Carroll whom I had heard singing and playing around Hastings in pubs, and made me think what a wonderful addition to the group she would make.

“Rumbling & Tumbling” is by The Trevor Watts Original Drum Orchestra. This idea for a more rhythmic improvisational ensemble with African influence came about in 1982, alongside the more composition-focussed ten-piece Moire Music group. These were the main ensembles that helped me fulfil my own personal expression and develop the kind of music I wanted to play. It included African musicians, as well as the violinist Peter Knight of Steeleye Span.

This group eventually morphed into The Trevor Watts Moire Music Drum Orchestra. I have decidated “Here's To You Nee Daku!” to one of our Ghanaian drummers called Nee Daku Patato, who was also the conga player in Osibisa. This was recorded on our first major tour which took place over six weeks in USA/Canada/Venezuela and Mexico. What a great time we all had. On that tour we met and played with the traditional musicians from the Teatro Negro De Barlovento Black Theatre & Music Group from Venezuela. The seeds of a later collaboration was formed with them at that time. I have included a later track from the ECM 1449 CD A Wider Embrace with some personnel changes to show the development we made, that is track 14 “Ahoom Mbram – Tetegramatan – Free Flow” into “Tetegramatan Reprise”. [These tracks] show what we can sound like with a great recording. This band toured all over the world many times, playing at many major festivals including San Francisco Jazz Fest, Glastonbury, 4 July at Freedom Plaza Washington DC, Womad, Penang Fest, Monterey Jazz Fest, Singapore Arts Fest and so on...

The Trevor Watts Celebration Band track called “Tar (Ta)” is from the very first CD of that group and features all Watts compositions. “Tar” is a dedication to The Master Musicians Of Jajouka who had a strong influence on me when I heard and saw them perform at the Commonwealth Institute in London in the 1970s. This Celebration Band mainly featured younger musicians I gathered together from that time based in Hastings in the UK.

“Three And More” is an example of the duo I had at that time with percussionist Jamie Harris and was driven by my interest in rhythmical ideas, even to the point of myself playing drums within that duo in order for me to understand some basic ideas that I had about rhythm, and to be able to pass that information on to Jamie. We rehearsed a minimum of three times a week and eventually performed in Brazil to very excited audiences at the Jazz Festival in Sao Paulo (two nights) as well as other places there. This was very gratifying and confirmed to me the direction of travel was working for others too. Then, after a few years together we stopped playing for 12 years. We now have reconnected and are playing together again and working on a new set of pieces once more, which is a real pleasure. This was mainly due to pianist Veryan Weston not only organising my 80th celebration at [London’s] 100 Years Gallery (which I will be eternally grateful for) but asking Jamie to come and play with me, which he did and we enjoyed. There’s a lot of history there which most people will not know about, but which is the glue that makes the music work and work well.

The track “Alatopa” features Jamie Harris & Gibran Cervantes with me on sax. Gibran plays his self designed instrument which he called the Urukungolo. Gibran is based in Mexico and the track was recorded there. I went many times to Mexico to play concerts there with Gibran but we also played the London Jazz Festival with this group and recorded a BBC broadcast too. Gibran and I collaborated for quite a few years and also with other musicians, such as Cyro Baptista from Brazil.

“Solarsonic” is from my very first solo CD and is very much an experimental effort. It’s featured on the Hi4HeadRecs CD, World Sonic. The next tracks feature a couple of my ideas using primarily overdubs but also other musicians. “Lace” is all me and “Burkina Nights” is mainly all me also, except for Jamie Harris playing the hand drums.

It is very special for me to be able to introduce more people to the ongoing duo I have with pianist Veryan Weston, and we have played together in Moire Music and as a duo amongst other things for 45 years at least. Here I've included a live performance from an appearance at the London Jazz Festival in 2011.

“Dialogues With Strings 3” is played by a very special ongoing quartet we call Dialogues With Strings, featuring the musicians Hannah Marshall, Alison Blunt, Veryan Weston and myself. This is followed by another live performance featuring Veryan and I at Alabama University in the USA.

And now two more ongoing current groups. The next track features the Lancaster based and extremely talented pianist Stephen Grew and myself playing “Let It Be” – no, not The Beatles’ one. “Meaningful” is by The Trevor Watts Quartet, which features the great line-up of John Edwards (bass), Mark Sanders (drums) and Veryan Weston (piano). We play the first night of the Cafe Oto two-day residency on 19 September. The quartet are also playing in the Purcell Room of the Royal Festival Hall as part of the London Jazz Festival 2019 on 15 November. The penultimate track is a current rendition of “Jamie's for US” by myself and Jamie Harris. And finally the duo of myself and Mark Hewins playing “Blue Grey”. Both duos will play on the second night of the residency at Cafe Oto.

Other highlights include membership of the Bobby Bradford Quartet and playing with such as Archie Shepp, Steve Swallow, Steve Lacy, Don Cherry, Rashied Ali, Johnny Dyani, Mongezi Feza, Frank Wright, Louis Moholo and Black Arts poet Jayne Cortez with Denardo Coleman and my longterm association with Ghanaian percussionist Nana Tsiboe, who is featured on a lot of these tracks. Without him, I believe, The Original Drum Orchestra and Moire Music Drum Orchestra would never have existed. Thank you Nana!! Apologies to anyone missed out. It is not intentional.


Trevor Watts and friends play at London’s Cafe Oto on 19–20 September and EFG London Jazz Festival on 15 November. Read an eight page interview with Watts in The Wire 295. Wire subscribers can access the article instantly via the magazine's full digital archive.