Tectonics 2025 Artist Profile
Rachel Musson
Rachel Musson (b. 1974) is a UK-based saxophonist, improviser, and composer. While she has spent much of the past decade focused on improvised music, she has recently expanded her practice to include composed elements, incorporating text, field recordings, and sound processing.
Known as a bold, adventurous, contemplative player and creative, imaginative composer,Rachel is involved with a variety of free improvisation projects. She works regularly with drummer Mark Sanders and pianist Pat Thomas (with whom she formed trio, Shifa), and bassist Olie Brice, Hannah Marshall, Julie Kjaer, Corey Mwamba, Alex Ward, Alex Hawkins amongst others and has featured on a several releases.
Rachel released her solo album, Dreamsing in 2021, a unique interplay between spoken word poetry and texturally lush, entirely improvised tenor saxophone. In early 2024 she released Ashes and Dust, Earth and Sky, LLudw a Llwch, Daear a Nef, a solo project exploring composition using different recording techniques. Field recordings collected from West Wales and London – including birdsong, and the London Underground – were integrated with saxophones, flutes and other bits and pieces. The improvisations and compositions were Rachel’s reflections on the different soundscapes she collected. Part composed and part improvised over a year, the music explores Musson’s sense of place of a specific little corner of Wales, juxtaposed against the familiar sounds of the city.
Recent performances include the Saarbrücken Free Jazz Festival (2024) and Blow OutFestival, Oslo (2023), the Two Ship Improvised Music Festival, Hastings (2024), and JazzIn The Round, Cockpit Theatre, London (2024).
'Mark and Rachel have been playing together for many years, working in various combinations, both small and large ensembles, and including the trio 'Shifa' with pianist Pat Thomas. This ongoing collaboration, along with their deep immersion in the international improvised music scene has led them to develop a shared and intuitive improvisational language. They are both recipients of the2024 Paul Hamlyn Awards and are using this opportunity to further develop their work together. Mark and Rachel are excited to collaborate with Ilan Volkov who will be using conduction with musicians from the 大象传媒 SSO on this entirely improvised piece for Tectonics 2025.'
