Shabaka

Shabaka Hutchings is a composer, saxophonist, clarinetist, and flutist who helped put England's 21st century jazz scene on the map as a founding member of the Heliocentrics and playing with Courtney Pine's Jazz Warriors. Recording for the Impulse! label, he led the modernist Sons of Kemet on the albums Your Queen Is a Reptile (2018) and Black to the Future (2021). Shabaka and the Ancestors, a jazz project based in South Africa, charted internationally with their 2016 debut, Wisdom of Elders and 2020's We Are Sent Here by History. Hutchings also co-leads the electro-acoustic, avant futurist jazz-rock-dance trio the Comet Is Coming, who issued a pair of widely acclaimed albums in 2019. Taking a hiatus from the saxophone, he released the flute- and clarinet-centered solo album Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace in 2022 under the name Shabaka.