ALEXANDER HAWKINS "ALEXANDER HAWKINS TRIO"

'A trio is the place where countless jazz pianists get their start, finding security in the armature provided by a bassist and a drummer and perhaps a sense of direction, too, from a long tradition that began in the music’s early days and continues to evolve in nedirections.Theextraordinarily gifted Alexander Hawkins, by contrast, waited before committing himself to a format so familiar as to represent, for a creative pianist, a considerable test of the imagination.
 Born in Oxford in 1981, Hawkins has been heard in many contexts, among them his own six-piece ensemble, the Ethiopian vibraphonist Mulatu Astatke’s band, the multinational Convergence Quartet, the three-piece Decoy (in which he plays Hammond organ), the quartets of the trumpeter Nick Malcolm, the drummer Steve Davis and the bassist Dominic Lash, as a solo pianist, and recently in duo, quartet and octet environments with Louis Moholo-Moholo. To encounter him at last in a trio (with the bassist Neil Charles and the drummer Tom Skinner) is like hearing the final element of a piece of machinery click into place.
..' ALEXANDER HAWKINS