Oh, that's really wonderful to hear!

Who should you have next? How do I choose?

I think you should have Luke Bacchus. It's one. And I'm also going to give you another one, ask me again after the show, because I would love to give you a person like a young woman who is doing things from Tomorrow’s Warriors, but I just want to check if she's got a band, I think she does.

They will always be my idols. I feel like once you tap into that part of the world in art, you can never leave it, but in a beautiful way, I think.

It's like when you listen for the first time to John Coltrane and like you're there, like actually really in it, you can never go back and almost like you never want to, because you're forever changed by that way of expression in music.

Someone who had the confidence and ability to learn everything from before him, took it, worked with it, and then so deeply developed his own sound and craft and practice to then influence a generation nearly 100 years later. That's phenomenal to me. So yes, they are still my idols for sure.

What happened, indeed? I was a terrible violin player. I started violin really young, maybe four or five years old. And I just hated it.

I hated it so much. And I think I saw another school band, like a big band, and I immediately thought that those instruments were way cooler. I must have mentioned this to my parents and years later, when I was about 10 years old and I was very much about to say that music isn't for me, I got a saxophone and that was it!

I barely touched the violin after that. It taught me a lot and now, I love the violin again. I don't play it anymore, but it seems like I have come back full circle to appreciate and love it.

Oh, yeah, in the massive amphitheater.

I'm trying to remember at that point whether I was still on my Conn, which also has a weird neck. But I'd have been on this saxophone called Lineage Series, which is by an instrument maker based in Leeds called Dave Walker. And he's recently just made me my first ever custom saxophone. So you'll be seeing that at the gig and it's truly a work of art.

I was playing on this other one for six years and we talked about it here and there, and what I like and what I didn't like. The first one wasn't made for me but this one was and it was a surprise! It was absolutely amazing. I got it last year, maybe in September, and I've never seen anything like it before, I've never heard anything like it and it's one of my favorite, if not the favorite horns to play.

I'm still getting into it and used to it, because I've been on my other one for like seven years and then my Conn for like 10 years or so, so it's a slow introduction to each other and I'm excited.

Yeah, it's a crazy horn, when you see it in person it's like whoa there's elements of past horns. Like you know Johnny Hodges had a snake on his neck, this one has a snake on the neck and I'm like “Dave how did you make this?”

He made one for Shabaka Hutchings as well. And so ours are completely different to each other and they are for us. So what Shabaka wanted, Shabaka got. The sound that suits me and what I wanted and what I was talking about for seven years about yeses and nos are in my saxophone. And then I got a new mouthpiece from him, because he just sent me a bunch. So yeah, it's been a really nice time.

I think what makes it legendary when both parties, being the audience, the artists and band, arrive open. There's a kind of synergy between the two of you. You know, you're playing something, they're receiving it, they're giving to you, you're receiving from them. So I think that's one part of it.

I think I really enjoy it when, in terms of how you arrive, the logistical stuff is easy. It's just kind of like everything's easy and you can just play and you don't have to think about anything else. I think people forget about that kind of thing - what happened at the airport, was the flight delayed, are you running late. Sometimes that makes the gig more, because your adrenaline is already up there before you've arrived. Sometimes it makes the gig weird because you're just like, we're still in the airport and we can't really believe that we actually made it on time, because of the delays.

I think musically, making something legendary, you can't think about it that way. That's not the goal for you, because then you start this weird psychosomatic thing of if you try too hard, then you're missing the point of actually just expressing and I think when you just let things go, and you are thorough, open, and you have really good channels of communication, you're speaking to the audience, you're there and present, both of you.

We live in a world where people find it really difficult to be present. And I think audiences are sometimes really with you and then sometimes it takes a bit of time to remind them that like “hey, we're here together” and it takes a bit of time to just sink into the room. I think that's really normal and really natural, because we have an attention deficit in society as a whole and there's also a lot going on in the world. So I think anything that makes people feel like you are welcome you're on the path to something special. The goal is to feel special.

“Legendary” is a difficult word, because you can't put that on yourself. You can't put that on your own festival. It comes from other people speaking on it and speaking life into what you do, and so that you can do it again. And it's that kind of thing, leave it alone and don't put too much pressure on it so that you can truly fly and be free within it. That's the purpose of art. And that's what makes people think like, you know, what's that concert? Miles Davis, 1970, 1964? Like that's what makes things legendary. It's not like someone saying, I wonder if it'll be a legendary show. I think that's a, it's a post thing rather than a pre thing. And you look back on it.

I have had so many gigs where I've been in the audience and I've been like, wow, that was a really special show and it will never happen again like that. And I hope to have created some moments like that. And I also understand that it comes from someone else and how they arrive at it. I can do the best that I can every single time I step on stage, that's my goal, and it's received in multiple different ways. It might be like 20 years later that you're like wow, I saw her, when she was just starting out and it was great, and now she's here.

I think I've also had moments like that where I'm thinking "oh, I saw this person with like 100 people in a club” and that was legendary, because it was small, it was intimate, it was like new as well and then I've seen people like Branford. I saw Branford at Newport, I don't remember the festival, last summer, and I was just like the things he was doing was amazing, that was legendary. I think he played something like “My Little Suede Shoes” really quietly like there's hundreds and thousands of people in front of him, and it was just so quiet with this band and I was just like yeah, you can do anything you want.

Thank you, I appreciate that. I'm really looking forward to it, so thank you for having me.

Gosh, that's really hard. I'm going to take liberties and say I'm going to give you two albums. I'm going to give you one old and I'm going to give you one new. I think that's fair, because we're in two different lanes with jazz. One world, but I think you have people who would be drawn to the older stuff and you have people who would be drawn to the newer stuff.

An old record, that hands down I probably have talked about in every interview, is Herbie Hancock - The Piano. No notes ever. No one ever has any notes for that record. It's just fantastic and I feel like it being solo piano you've created all that magic on your own. So that's that record.

A modern record, this is really tough. A modern jazz record that I think would get people into jazz probably has to be, I mean, it's modern-ish. I'm going to say Joshua Redman - Wish. It's the one with “Soul Dance” on it. I listened to it so much and now I can't even remember the title. When I was a teenager that was a big one.