Barbara Thompson (27 July 1944 – 9 July 2022)

Looking back on his 1976 recording A Kaleidoscope of Rainbows, composer and bandleader Neil Ardley told me, ‘Barbara Thompson’s soprano saxophone solo on ‘Rainbow 4’ was just about the best solo anyone ever played for me. It was overdubbed late at night. Barbara was playing alone in the studio, and Paul Buckmaster, who was producing, said, “Look at my arm!” All the hairs on his arm were standing on end – it was simply spine-tingling what she was doing.’ Hearing her recreate this live with Neil and the expanded version of Ian Carr’s Nucleus at the Stables in Wavendon twenty years later was no less stimulating, and she again stole the show.

In a career that began with a summer season for Ivy Benson, before starting studies at the Royal College of Music in 1964, Barbara Thompson produced many such a dramatic solo. In the New Jazz Orchestra, from 1965, and in guest appearances with a huge range of 1960s star musicians from Manfred Mann to Keef Hartley and Keith Emerson, and later with Andrew Lloyd Webber, she brought her magic touch to a diverse array of recordings, but it was in her own bands Paraphernalia and Jubiaba, both formed in the 70s, that she really shone. The 14 CD set of her BBC recordings, covering 27 broadcasts from 1969 to 1990 is a testament to her originality and dedicated workload. And as well as this, she managed to fit in work with the United Jazz and Rock Ensemble, (alongside her husband the drummer Jon Hiseman, who also appeared in her own bands) plus leading her own big band Moving Parts from the late 1980s.

Barbara’s musical achievements alone would have guaranteed her a special place in British jazz history, but in 1997, the year she was awarded an MBE for services to music, she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. I have met few truly brave people in my life, but Barbara was far and away one of the bravest. In November 1999, from the Bull’s Head in Barnes, for Radio 3 I presented what we all thought at the time would be her farewell concert with Paraphernalia. She and I did an emotional interview that looked back on her career, and it seemed that a chapter in her life had closed. But that would be to underestimate Barbara, and her staunch determination to overcome her illness, which led to another ‘farewell’ tour in 2001. Then, with the help of her consultant, Professor Ray Chaudhuri, she began a sequence of treatments, many of them experimental, to allow her to control her movement and continue playing the saxophone. Her success, grit and determination were simply phenomenal.

In the 2010 BBC 4 documentary about her fight against Parkinson’s, Playing For Time, some scenes of the agonising suffering she went through between her treatments, are almost too harrowing to watch. But she prevailed, and when Dick Heckstall-Smith died unexpectedly in 2004 before a scheduled tour with Hiseman’s Colosseum, she stepped into the breach. Not only did she learn all the parts in double-quick time, but she joined the band on a gruelling trajectory across Europe. After this came another ‘farewell’ European tour with Paraphernalia in 2005, from which a fine DVD was issued, but yet again she rallied and appeared on film with the band at Ronnie Scott’s in 2008, as well as pouring her energies into writing music for others to play, including orchestral, chamber and choral groups. A new treatment in 2010 brought her back to the stage again, and the Youtube footage from Colosseum’s nineteen concerts that autumn show Barbara on coruscating form. Her career renaissance as a player continued until 2015 and the release of her final Paraphernalia album The Last Fandango, which includes some of her finest work. Although she retired from live performance, Barbara continued to compose, and after Jon Hiseman’s untimely death in 2018, she devoted herself to her autobiography, Journey To A Destination Unknown. Writing such a personal story is no easy task, but as ever, she succeeded and as her old New Jazz Orchestra colleague Dave Gelly put it, on every page “I can hear Barbara’s voice telling it.”

She will be sorely missed, but she leaves an exceptional musical legacy.