Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Barbara Gracey Thompson was born on July 27, 1944 in Oxford, England. She studied saxophone and classical composition at the Royal College of Music, but it was the music of Duke Ellington and John Coltrane that made her shift her interests to jazz and saxophone.

Around 1970, Thompson was part of Neil Ardley’s New Jazz Orchestra and appeared on albums by Colosseum. Beginning in 1975, she was involved in the foundation of three bands: United Jazz and Rock Ensemble, a group of bandleaders; Barbara Thompson’s Jubiaba, a nine piece Latin/rock band; and  Barbara Thompson’s Paraphernalia, her most recent band with pianist Peter Lemer, vocalist Billy Thompson, bassist Dave Ball, and the late Jon Hiseman on drums.

Awarded the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1996 for her services to music, due to Parkinson’s disease diagnosed in 1997, she retired as an active saxophonist in 2001 with a farewell tour. After a period of working as a composer exclusively, she returned to the stage in 2003.

Following hospitalization with atrial fibrillation, she landed a role in an accident and emergency department featured in an episode of the Channel 4 fly-on-the-wall television documentary “24 Hours in A&E” in October 2020.

Thompson has worked closely with Andrew Lloyd Webber on musicals such as Cats and Starlight Express, his Requiem, and Lloyd Webber’s 1978 classical-fusion album Variations. She has written several classical compositions, music for film and television, a musical of her own and songs for the United Jazz and Rock Ensemble, Barbara Thompson’s Paraphernalia and her big band Moving Parts.

She played the incidental music in the ITV police series A Touch of Frost starring David Jason, and flute on Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. Saxophonist and flutist Barbara Thompson remains active.

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