Reedsman Shabaka Hutchings has been confirmed as the latest jazz BBC New Generation Artist following hard on the heels of Tom Arthurs who while based in Berlin managed to use his stint to increase his artistic ambitions helped by the high profile endorsement from BBC Radio 3.

In the past the scheme was aimed primarily at classical musicians, if you like, the fresh new talent strand. But as Radio 3 has widened its remit under controller Roger Wright currently under intense pressure from sections of the entrenched classical music community and little Englanders following less than rosey ratings, the jazz input has enhanced the format and made it come alive.

Pianist Gwilym Simcock showed the way, and his jazz and classical pedigree went some distance in uniting the too-often weirdly diametrically opposed communities, part of the purpose of the scheme.

Hutchings, who often favours the clarinet and bass clarinet but also gives equal weight to the saxophone, was educated in Birmingham followed by further study at the Guildhall School of Music And Drama in London where he now lives, and where he has been a busy presence on the scene in the capital. He spent the summer performing with a myriad of bands including playing at the Brit-Jazz Fest with the London Improvisers Orchestra and jamming at the Vortex the night Wynton Marsalis played there. Last year he appeared in the band of Mercury winner Speech Debelle. He also made a huge impact at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival last year when he excelled in the Jack DeJohnette All Stars “conduction” project which featured all the hip young gunslingers from the UK jazz scene. He appears on the just released Soweto Kinch album The New Emancipation and last year as a member of Zed-U was a key instrumental voice on the underrated album Night Time On The Middle Passage.

First surfacing in 2007 when he played at the Jazzwise To The Power Of Ten festival at the Pizza Express Jazz Club in London he by then had the backing of noted talent scout bassist Gary Crosby and quickly made his mark within several different genres, straddling the avant garde as well as the post-Coltrane orthodoxy with a strong improv sensibility as well. “How do you know you’re real?” as Sun Ra had it, is one of his maxims. His influences include Arvo Pärt, John Coltrane, Björk, Charlie Parker and Ornette Coleman.

– Stephen Graham