Soweto Kinch is a Birmingham-based jazz saxophonist and rap artist who has made an international impact with his innovative blend of hard-bop and hip hop styles.
Born in London in 1978 to a Barbadan father - the playwright Don Kinch, with whom he has collaborated on a number of projects - and a British-Jamaican mother, he grew up in Handsworth and attended Bromsgrove School where a slightly younger contemporary and early musical collaborator was Fyfe Dangerfield, of Guillemots.
He began playing clarinet at the age of eight and was given his first alto saxophone a year later. A meeting with Wynton Marsalis at the age of 13 helped set him on the jazz path.
A protege of bass player Gary Crosby and his youth ensemble Tomorrow's Warriors, he first came to wide attention in 2002 when he won a competition for young saxophonists at the Montreux Jazz Festival against fierce international competition. Two weeks later he sealed his arrival by collecting the Rising Star category in the BBC Radio Jazz Awards.
His debut album Conversations with the Unseen, featuring his regular quartet, set out his jazz-and-hip hop agenda and won a prestigious Mercury Prize nomination. Its follow-up, Tales of the Tower Block: A Life in the Day of B19, released last year, proved to be the first instalment of an ambitious two-part concept album about a group of characters living in a Birmingham high-rise. Featuring narration by TV newsreader Moira Stewart, it is an audacious blend of jazz, hip hop and radio drama.
Unfortunately it landed him in a long-running dispute with high street record shops - which he dubbed "The War in a Rack" - over their commercially-puzzling refusal to stock the album in their hip hop as well as jazz sections.
Kinch has so far declined to take the well-trodden path to London, committing himself to Birmingham and helping to develop other local talent through his Sunday night Live Box sessions at The Drum.
He will become an associate artist of the Town Hall when it reopens in October. For its reopening festival he has been commissioned to write a musical show, The Midnight Hop, based on his researches into the little-known history of black musicians in 18th century England. Featuring an ensemble from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, this will reflect his interest in baroque music.
In addition to a clutch of musical awards including MOBO Award for Best Jazz Act 2003, the Urban Music Awards Best Jazz Act 2004, BBC Radio Jazz Awards Best Instrumentalist & Best Band 2004 and Peter Whittingham Award for Jazz Innovation 2004, Soweto has a degree in Modern History from Oxford University.
"A distinct and commanding way of looking at jazz, at hip hop, and at the whole performance situation. Mr Kinch demonstrates what England has to teach us about narrative hip hop [and] has one of the best sounding new jazz groups I've heard lately. Don't sleep on Mr Kinch." - The New York Times on Soweto Kinch's New York debut.
