Lockdown provided us all with a stream of solipsistic solo records. But Alex Hitchcock looks outside of himself on Dream Band, enlisting a quality cast of players who move slickly around the saxophonist. There’s a lot of them; 15 in total over 12 tracks, and no one collaborator appears on more than half the record. All the chopping and changing disguises a wisely-assembled project. The players fuse interestingly in their little units, and Hitchcock’s compositions serve those combinations well. The result is an album full of strong contributions from musicians determined to impress in the slivers of time they’re given; a bunch of pent-up ideas tumble forth energetically.

Of an impressive line-up, Midori Jaeger shows the widest range, from the impulsive movements of ‘Wolf And Nina’ to the woozily delivered ‘Azalea’, sparsely scored for plucked cello, sax and vocals. It’s a good record for piano talent too, with Noah Stoneman, Will Barry and Deschanel Gordon all on great form. Sadly, such an album is impossible to reproduce live, but this excellent record captures a lot of that collaborative thrill.

Jazzwise spoke to Alex Hitchcock about the album…

Dream Band is like jazz’s answer to fantasy football…

A pleasure to be interviewed by someone that knows the power of a football/music analogy! Before lockdown, I was getting to play with a wide variety of musicians (particularly, but not exclusively, from the London scene) on a regular basis. The breadth of these musicians’ creativity meant that you could be playing the same music but it would sound totally different between lineups. I wanted to document how that would play out across one record.

Here, you assume the role of composer-curator; what were the pleasures and challenges of writing for such a fluid lineup?

The main pleasure is definitely ‘hearing’ a particular musician’s playing in your mind’s ear and writing for them – and I got to do that 14 times with this album. There’s definitely a difference in writing for someone like Shane Forbes, whose playing I know well, and say Midori Jaeger who I was working with for the first time, but that was the fun part. All the musicians are operating at a very high technical level so the music sounded good right from the first (only!) rehearsal – everything came together easily. It’s really inspiring to hear the music take on an identity that you as a composer wouldn’t have been able to give it on your own.

The overall sound is remarkably cohesive…

That’s great, and I think something to do with the spirit in which the album was made. I was really grateful for the openness and warmth with which everyone approached the session.

Has creating Dream Band made you re-evaluate collaboration?

It was eye-opening to realise you could imagine line-ups of musicians who hadn’t necessarily played together before) I hope to do a volume two as there are multiple possible ‘dream bands’ I would like to put together.