Former Jazz Messenger Jean Toussaint has become a fixture on the London jazz scene both as a player and a highly respected educator. At the very first BBC Jazz Awards in 2001 his album The Street Above The Underground scooped the album of the year award. But remarkably, his brand new album Live in Paris and London, which has just come out, is his first album in eight years since Blue Black, the follow-up to The Street in 2002, and his first recorded live. It’s been more than worth the wait, says Selwyn Harris

The students who attended the Berklee jazz class in the early 1980s had some future ahead of them. Branford Marsalis, Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts, Greg Osby, Wallace Roney and Donald Harrison were among the classmates at Boston’s illustrious conservatory during that period. Another one was the tenor and soprano saxophonist Jean Toussaint. Before he took up a temporary teaching post at London’s Guildhall School of Music steering him in a totally different direction to that of his peers, the Virgin Islandsborn saxophonist was a Jazz Messenger between 1982 and 1986 alongside fellow sidemen that included Harrison, Mulgrew Miller and Terence Blanchard. That most celebrated of jazz onthe-job academies almost inevitably has had a profound and enduring impact on Toussaint.

This is an extract from Jazzwise Issue #143 – to read the full article click here to subscribe and receive a FREE copy of Denys Baptiste's 'Let Freedom Ring!'.