“I love bebop, I love challenging music. But I also love a big tune.”EMMA-JEAN THACKRAY IN EARLY 2023, shortly after beginning work on the follow-up to Yellow, her sprawling, cosmic jazz-funk debut album, Emma-Jean Thackray was blindsided by the sudden death of her partner, electronica composer Matthew Gordon. “I just felt so lost,” she remembers, calling from the cramped studio within her south London flat. “I didn’t do anything other than stare at the wall like a blob for six months. I didn’t know who I was any more. But eventually, I realised my only way back to myself would be through music.”
Music had been Thackray’s North Star since she began playing cornet, aged eight. Soon she was performing in Yorkshire colliery brass bands, becoming an evangelical jazzbo after…
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MOJO (Digital) - 1 Issue, May 2025