CASSIE KINOSHI relishes her role as part of the UK jazz renaissance, collaborating with Nubya Garcia, Sons Of Kemet and Ezra Collective. But while her own work with big bands and orchestras operates on a grander scale to the smaller ensembles led by contemporaries like Shabaka Hutchings, the composer/saxophonist knows you can have too much of a good thing.
Back in 2020, juggling Afrobeat group Kokoroko, all-star septet Nérija, her own SEED Ensemble – since renamed seed. – and scoring for theatre, Kinoshi found herself suffering “deep burnout”. “I needed to rest, to reconnect with my creativity, with myself,” she remembers. Respite came with the Covid lockdown, which gave her “space to cook, to read, to think. And then I started writing material for myself again.”
From these restorative writing sessions cameGratitude, Kinoshi’s second LP as leader, a symphonic work in seven movements she describes as “a celebration of nature and the communities that bring me joy. My mum has a ‘gratitude book’, a notebook where she writes things she feels grateful for, and I found celebrating the small, beautiful things in life really inspiring.”
Kinoshi grew up in Welwyn Garden City, with a piano in the front room and music always playing. “My family was into Afrobeat, musicals, jazz. And my dad always played Classic FM on Sundays. I became obsessed with Dvořák’s New World Symphony, getting lost in its evocative soundworld.”
At 18, she moved to London to study at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire, spending Saturdays at Tomorrow’s Warriors, a programme for young musicians interested in jazz and improvisation. “We learned about jazz from incredible British players,” she says, “and forged really close friendships there.” Indeed, SEED Ensemble evolved from the Tomorrow’s Warriors Youth Big Band she assembled at Trinity Laban, indulging her obsession with Duke Ellington and Gil Evans. “I love the colours and the layers of big band music – the blending of different harmonies,” Kinoshi explains. “But touring and funding a big band like that is pretty difficult.”
The 10-piece seed., however, enables Kinoshi’s majestic visions on a manageable budget, and serves as “a space to experiment with sound and express my politics”. Their debut, 2019’s Mercury-nominated Driftglass, explored “the othering of black peop
