The Ivors Jazz Award - Django Bates

The Ivors Jazz Award is like a glorious British summer: it doesn’t come along very often but, when it does, it’s always truly memorable.

And the 2019 winner, Django Bates, is no exception: he is undoubtedly one of the most talented and versatile jazz musicians the UK has ever seen.

Bates made his name as a member of Loose Tubes, the collective that gave British jazz a new lease of life in the 1980s. Anarchic and unpredictable, the band turned the domestic scene upside down, and Bates was bang in the middle of it, kick-starting a career that has never failed to keep people guessing.

His versatility means that he is an expert across the jazz sub-genre spectrum. He’s played in trios, quartets, Bill Bruford’s Earthworks and many other combos, and held numerous academic posts, while his own compositions have covered a staggering range of material.

His commissions have included percussionist Evelyn Glennie’s My Dream Kitchen, What’s It Like To Be Alive with pianist Joanna MacGregor and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and his own electric keyboard concerto, 2000 Years Beyond UNDO.

He has never been afraid of applying his challenging approach to more mainstream tastes: his tributes to Charlie Parker and The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band dazzled, while he has worked on music for theatre productions of everything from As You Like It to The Postman Always Rings Twice and, in his role as artistic director of the FuseLeeds festival, gave Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood his first orchestral commission.

“I always felt I would always pursue my own music utterly on my own terms,” he once said and, as always, he’s been true to his word. And that’s why this rare breed of composer is truly deserving of this rarest of accolades.