Tomorrow’s Warriors’ Female Frontline, Cherise, Eska and Marta Lopez Baxe fire-up Jazz Cafe

"I'm used to being a young person in this line-up," said award-winning singer Cherise, 26, standing centre stage and addressing her fellow songbirds, Keira Chakraborty and Marta Lopez Baxe, who were positioned next to her. The trio had just delivered some wildly tuneful harmonising on Cherise's 'Hear Me', a feat more impressive for the fact that Chakraborty is at the end of her teens and Lope Baxe – who a little earlier had scatted with impressive, pure voiced ease - is but 15-years-old.

"You're looking at me as if I'm the elder. I guess I am!" A grin. "Aargh! Millennial angst!"

Around them, a band on piano, flute, guitar, trumpet and drums – the players all young women, all of them students and alumni of the Tomorrow's Warriors Development program – flashed smiles. Mentorship is key to the pioneering jazz education organisation, co-founded by Gary Crosby and Janine Irons in 1991 with a remit to nurture new young female talent as well as young players from the African diaspora. An 'each one, teach one' philosophy has, over the course of three decades plus, worked to empower the collective as well as the individual.

L-R above: Mali Sheard, Maddy Coombs and Marta Lopez Baxe

This was the annual fundraising party for Tomorrow's Warriors, whose legacy continues to ripple across the UK jazz scene. Like 15-year-old flautist Ciara Osuagwu (who played beside Chakraborty, also a flautist, their backs straight, their elbows at elegant right angles), Lopez Baxe is a member of the Tomorrow's Warriors’ Junior Band, garnering skills needed to work solo and in ensembles under the tutelage of professionals from within the artistic team. Many of whom were there at the Jazz Cafe, graduates of the eight-piece Female Frontline line-up (onstage as well), whose convenor, drummer Romarna Campbell, conducted proceedings with expansive, finger-waggling joy.

"Chant it with me: TOMORROWSWARRIORS.DOT.ORG," cried the multi-hyphenate Eska, the evening's host, as T-shirts and double vinyl editions of I Am Warrior Live at the Jazz Cafe (2019 - 2021) were snapped up and a sold-out room of young jazz fans threw back their heads and did exactly that. This was a remarkable gathering, not the least for the scale of the staggering talent, but as an augury for the future of women in jazz, as players, collaborators and composers.

 "She's just got into the finals of BBC Young Jazz Musicians of the Year!" proclaimed Eska of trumpeter Klara Devlin, 18, to roars.

Commissioned pieces by the hotly emerging likes of keys players Emily Tran and Kezia Abuoma and tenor saxophonist Maddy Coombs (her 'Thankyou' intended as a paean to Tomorrow's Warriors) impressed as they mesmerised and uplifted. The rhythmic free-for-alls of drummer Meg Visagie, 17, saw a proud Campbell filming as she conducted, phone in one outstretched hand as she directed the band with the other. TW graduate and international star Camilla George presented her 'Emem' (Peace), firing off tenor riffs alongside Coombs and alto player Mali Sheard, before a grand finale of 'I Am Warrior' saw Eska singing lead and the entire collective improvising with gusto.

A remarkable evening, then, and a reassuring one: the future of UK jazz is in mighty hands. All together now: TOMORROWSWARRIORS.DOT.ORG