Barbara Thompson
Composer/saxophonist Barbara Thompson (born 1944) is one of the most influential performers and bandleaders in European jazz. Born in Oxford, she studied clarinet, flute and piano at the Royal College of Music, but a love of jazz led to the saxophone. In 1964, she spent a season with the Ivy Benson ‘All Girl Band’. At 21, she joined Neil Ardley’s New Jazz Orchestra. The group featured a stellar lineup of British jazz greats, including Henry Lowther, Ian Carr, Mike Gibbs, Jack Bruce, Frank Ricotti and Jon Hiseman. She married Hiseman in 1967 and they remained together until his death in 2018. When he formed Colosseum in 1968, Thompson supplemented the saxophone work of Dick Heckstall-Smith as well as providing occasional backing vocals for the 1970 album Daughter Of Time.
During the early 1970s she also worked with Bill Le Sage, Art Themen, Don Rendell and John Dankworth. She joined the United Jazz & Rock Ensemble in 1975, an association that would last until its farewell tour of 2002. This influential 10-piece band included many of Europe’s leading modernists like Wolfgang Dauner, Ian Carr, Ack Van Rooyen, Eberhard Weber, Kenny Wheeler and Albert Mangelsdorff.
Thompson led her own important group Paraphernalia from 1975, with an initial lineup of Hiseman, Colin Dudman and Dill Katz. This fusion combo allowed Thompson to explore her burgeoning compositional skills. They became a popular club and festival draw into the 1990s, when she began to slow down following a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. She led a 19-piece big band Moving Parts from 1989 to 1994 and in 1993 toured in a European all-star group with Enrico Rava, Michał Urbaniak, Jasper van t’ Hof, Bo Stief and Hiseman. Thompson has also enjoyed successful collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber, Medici String Quartet, Rod Argent and Manfred Mann, and she and Hiseman provided the music for the ITV hit series ‘A Touch Of Frost’. She was awarded an MBE for services to music in 1996. She was still touring with Colosseum and Paraphernalia as recently as 2006.
Key Recordings:
With Neil Ardley, Don Rendell, etc
Paraphernalia (MCA 1978)
Ghosts (MCA 1983) with Rod Argent
Heavenly Bodies (Intuition 1986)
