TW presents Christ-Stephane Boizi 6tet at The Elgar Room / Royal Albert Hall
Jazz Trombonist Christ-Stephane Boizi is one of Tomorrow's Warriors Emerging artists on the rise with his sextet. He is performing on the 1st of Sep. at the Elgar Room @Royal Albert Hall, a gig not to be missed.
We got to know a little more about Christ-Stephane Boizi in our Jazznewblood interview series.
How did you start playing music? Was the trombone your first instrument?
I’ve always grown up around music- growing up in Church- it’s essential. However, playing music didn’t actually start until I was in Secondary School and joined the gospel choir. I went to a boys school so singing gospel music in a boys choir was an extremely unique experience. My voice was definitely my first instrument which I haven’t really thought about until now haha. That has definitely guided my approaches to the trombone and composition for sure.
What organisations impacted your development pre-conservatoire studies?
I started learning music in school and before the summer of year 9, Mark Kavuma, a great mentor and older brother, visited my Secondary School, being an ex people. Alongside my teacher, great mentor and original Jazz Warrior, Andy Grappy they delivered a short workshop about Kinetika Bloco. I was hooked from then, especially because Andy pointed me out and said “you should definitely go.
”If I didn’t go that would not have been a good look, right. Having spent 3 years with Andy by then, I’m sure he realised that I was one of those students that needed a little nudge in the right direction.
Kinetika’s annual senior summer school eventually came around and being around future mentors like Ruben Fox, Misha Fox, Sheila Maurice Grey, Nathaniel Cross amongst others made it a super special experience. I didn’t think I could have fun and play music at the same time and Kinetika Bloco definitely demystified that for me.
I joined Warriors a Summer after and that was a complete whirlwind.
After having super long conversations with Sheila and realising I wanted to learn more about the art form we call jazz, I joined Ben Burrell group. I have a super clear memory from that first session. I believe we were going through the repertoire and it came time to soloing, I was familiar with key centres but making the changes was something I didn’t know about so Ben put the iReal chart on my stand and I remember staring at it in confusion because I had never seen those symbols in-front of me.
Then it was just a long process of making sense of theory and harmony and how that translates onto my horn. I am not there yet, trust me. Baby steps. During lockdown I didn’t engage with the programme much until Gary asked me to join his Friday sessions and said he was putting together a band of young people.
These Friday sessions really helped me to understand the basics of playing with other people in smaller combo settings. Going through jazz standards, being asked to communicate on the spot, receiving feedback on what I had played in, on an extremely safe environment, was amazing.
We were also playing in pretty high pressure scenarios aswell and experimenting with our own compositions. It was an amazing experience to jump into right before conservatoire for sure.
You are studying at Trinity. Are you happy with the tools they are giving you?
I’m super happy with all the resources I’m being given. I’m super grateful for the community it’s afforded me and the space it’s provided me to grow and being who I am now.
Musically, before going to conservatoire I would say I was super ignorant and quite narrow minded, but Trinity has helped to brighten my horizons. I don’t think I would be playing the music I would be playing and with the people I am playing it with if it wasn’t for the environment.
I’m being taught by amazing teachers such as the likes of Trevor Mires and Byron Wallen, two of the UK’s leading musicians. They’ve helped to de-mystify things for me about the trombone and the art form of jazz that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise. And in-terms of support networks they’ve been great and had the perfect balance of tough love and generosity.
As musicians it’s not always going to be good days on and off the horn but we got to maximise the good.
Tell me about your band.
I have a sextet, which is under my name, Christ-Stéphane Boizi.
It’s comprised of Lauren Breen on Alto, Jacob Wilson on Tenor, Sacha Harlan on Drums and latest additions recently Kezia Abuoma on Piano and Tom Sheen on bass.
A bit of unusual instrumentation in the horn section but it works haha. The band started out because I needed to put a band together for my secondary school’s annual industry event. Funny story Lauren couldn’t make the gig cause she was sick and so i got another tenor player to make the gig.
We spent the entire summer just playing through standards, and my personal favourite Ugestu (Fantasy in D) by Cedar Walton/ Freddie Hubbard until we joined Trinity. A lot of the band members I had met at trinity’s open day earlier in the year but had barely heard play. In fact I hadn’t heard Jacob play at all but we had ended up hitting it off over a shared interest in a cartoon we both watched and I asked him to join the band.
I don’t know I guess you could say it was an act of faith because we’re inseparable now. The band has grown from strength to strength, and I honestly trust in each member so much. They’ve had to put up with me for a long time- at the start there was a lot of miscues and bad formatting and chart writing but it’s getting better, I hope.
You are playing original music, what is the direction you are going towards musicality?
What are your inspirations?
95% of the stuff we’ve been playing the last year has been my original compositions.
I mean with a sextet there is no better outfit than the Art Blakey Jazz Messengers right?
I think that was the initial outlook I had for the band, and we plan to revisit his material very soon in greater detail.
I spent a lot of time thinking about what I could write and what would be my inspiration for writing music and decided I would use my faith and Christian walk as the main focus for all my music. This was at a time when I was seeing Sultan Stevenson, a great friend and older brother, be super bold and really start to progress in his musical career and he was also relating a lot of his music to his Caribbean heritage and his faith. I remember listening to Passage thinking damn I wish I could write like that. However in all honestly one of if not the biggest inspiration of mine has to be Mark Kavuma’s banger factory outfit, I used to play along to every solo on all the records he had out by the time I was in year 12. I was addicted, the ballads man oh my!! Mark can write a ballad. What made it even more amazing was every single person on those records I knew of very well or to some degree.
A lot more recently, for the past year and a half I’ve been digging into a lot more of the New York scene. Sultan actually hipped me to them but it took me a while to come round to listening to them properly. He showed me Giveton Gelin’s record and from then I was hooked and I’ve been looking in that direction a lot more recently!! People like Joel Ross, Gregory Groover, Ambrose Akinmusire, Immanuel Wilkins etc.
Are you planning to record and release anything soon?
If you asked me a couple months ago- the answer would have been no. I’m opening up to the idea. I definitely want to gig with the band more and use those gigs as a way to improve on the material before we head into the studio. We’ll definitely record stuff but I don’t think anything will be released for a little while.
For your next concert at the Royal Albert Hall, what can we expect?
If you’ve never seen our sextet, one thing you can expect is that it’s going to be swinging. I won’t let too much out of the bag. We’re going to be having a good time and we hope you do. We’ll be playing all things hard-bop, ‘gospel jazz’ and post-bop inspired. See you then!
Interview and photos by Patricia Pascal
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