This month: Zoe Rahman
‘I’m really looking forward to Cheltenham!’ says Zoe Rahman, cutting to the chase. It’s a helpful opener, given that her career as a pianist and composer lends itself to an impossibly wideranging conversation. An alumna of the Royal Academy of Music and Oxford University and the recipient of a Berklee scholarship that saw her studying under Joanne Brackeen, her inventiveness conveys her sophisticated musical thinking. Her achievements include Ivor Novello and MOBO Awards, a Mercury nomination, performances worldwide and an expanding discography.
The Cheltenham Jazz Festival has previously welcomed her in a piano duo with Nikki Yeoh, but her forthcoming appearance (on 29 April) is in a very different context. ‘I’m bringing a quintet with a slightly unusual line-up,’ she says. That’s true enough, given that the band’s front line comprises flute and trumpet/flugelhorn, handled by Rowland Sutherland and Byron Wallen. ‘There’ll be some alto flute as well,’ she adds, ‘which together with the flugelhorn will extend the range a bit.’
It’s an idea that perhaps seems less surprising in the light of Rahman’s interest in varied arrangements of her material, whether her own or by others. She cites Mark Armstrong as an example of the latter: ‘I’d worked with him before in the Clark Tracey Quintet and he arranged one of my tunes a while ago for NYJO (National Youth Jazz Orchestra).’ Of her own recent work in this area, she says, ‘I’m going to be doing a new album and
I’ve been writing some new material which I’ve been playing with my trio on the few gigs we’ve been having during the pandemic. Some of the tunes lend themselves to a larger band, so I’ve done arrangements of them for, for example, a performance at the Royal Academy involving four horns.’
There’s much more that could be said about her other projects, past and future, but in the meantime her Cheltenham quintet will make for an interesting and unusual halfway-house between her trio and her outings with larger ensembles. Roger Thomas
Rahman’s inventiveness conveys her sophisticated musical thinking