Taking Off: Poppy Daniels

Sleeping in airports, back-to-back tours, and gigs on Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. This is the lifestyle of an in-demand session musician according to trumpeter Poppy Daniels.

Over the last year, she’s toured with rapper Nix Northwest, recorded for Blue Lab Beats, and performed at Alexandra Palace as part of the horn section Komodo Horns. Yet, as Poppy tells it, it was while balancing these many musical plates that she developed the idea for her own eponymous project.

“I think it was the summer before last. I remember thinking, ‘God this is so crazy, and I love it so much.’ But I was really, like, hungry to start my own project.”

After some initial nerves, it was Adam Moses from the record label Jazz re:freshed who gave Poppy a much-needed push in late 2022, booking her for the 2023 edition of Brick Lane Jazz Festival.

This gave her six months to write and rehearse a full set, which she did alongside friend and collaborator, bassist Alley Lloyd, effectively transitioning into a bandleader in the process. But for Poppy, both sides of the profession are integral to her as a musician.

“I actually really enjoy session work. I think having my own project came from three or four years of playing with a variety of artists that I was just obsessed with. They kind of influenced me as players. Now, I’m at a nice point where I have my own project alongside still being able to tour with artists that I love working with.”

Poppy exudes warmth and energy, and the terms ‘obsessed’, ‘loved’, and ‘inspired’ crop up in our conversation more than once. It’s how she relays her passion for the trumpet, which she picked up in primary school, encouraged by her music education-oriented parents (her dad is also a trombonist.)

She’s similarly enthusiastic when describing her journey of jazz discovery, which began by hearing Louis Armstrong’s ‘La Vie En Rose’ playing from her dad’s computer, and which gradually grew to include repertoire by Miles Davis, Clifford Brown, and Blue Mitchell. Perhaps most significantly, Poppy’s warmth shines through when she talks about her fellow musicians. It’s a refreshing attitude given the somewhat competitive climate of the contemporary jazz scene, and serves as a constant motivator and asset for the young musician.

While studying, and at points struggling, at the Leeds College of Music, her friendship with another trumpeter on the course was a turning point.

“I became really close to the other trumpet player in my year, and he was amazing. We just got on so well. It got to the point where I called him up, and I just said: ‘look, if I buy you, like, a 10 pack of beer, can I just come round every Sunday, and can you just teach me jazz?’ So I did that every Sunday, for about a year. We would start from something silly at like 10am, and play standards all day. He just gave me a kick up the bum, but he did it in a very loving and caring way.”

Her method of dealing with the anxiety of integrating into the formidable London jazz scene, having studied and lived in another city prior, is inspiring. After Leeds, she moved to New York on an ESTA visa, explaining: “I basically wanted to build confidence back up within myself so that when I moved to London I could have that kind of hustling mentality.”

There, she befriended other local trumpet players, which in turn led to more opportunities. Some formative experiences include sitting in with one of her idols, Barry Harris, and deputising for a friend in a big band rehearsal led by Bobby Sanabria: “It makes you realise how incredibly nice musicians are in the scene, because I think jazz definitely can have a negative connotation of being elitist. But from my experience in New York, everyone was so welcoming.”

A few days after our interview, Poppy is performing at the Vortex in Dalston alongside a band of close friends: Alessandro Ionna on piano, Kian Cardenas on guitar, Tricky on bass guitar, and Lox on drums. She channels respect as she introduces each member, and this fellowship flows into the performance, where the virtuosity of the band is collectively felt. Seeing this strong dynamic at play evokes some of Poppy’s inspirational words:

“I think a lot of people are scared to ask for help, or to be like, seen as having a weakness. But I think asking for help is such a powerful thing to do. You know, ‘I don't know how to play this, or what's going on here, or like, could you just describe this? I think showing weakness is almost a good thing because, you know, it shows that you're not perfect, and you don't think you're perfect, and you're not trying to be perfect, you're just trying to do the best you can.”

This article originally appeared in the March 2024 issue of Jazzwise. Never miss an issue – subscribe today