Jack Wilson on The Bear And The Wolf

Born in North Yorkshire and now based in London, saxophonist and composer Jack Wilson is an emerging voice on the UK jazz scene, blending a deep-rooted love of jazz tradition with a modern approach to bandleading and composition. Growing up in a musical household surrounded by jazz and repertoire from the Great American Songbook, he first discovered the saxophone after a formative encounter with a school jazz band at the age of seven which set him on a lifelong path in music. 

I was joined by Jack a few weeks ago to discuss his debut record The Bear and the Wolf, the inspiration behind its creation, and the importance of the musical connections that shape his sound…

What prompted your journey into music? 

It started off when I was little; I was always around jazz-influenced music as my dad plays trombone in an amateur big band. My mum is also very into musicals, so I was hearing a lot of that old musical repertoire that you find in the Great American Songbook. 

When I was at primary school they were doing something called ‘Art Week’, and the high school brought in their jazz band as a sort of finale. I remember being seven years old and seeing what a saxophone was, and running home and thinking ‘I want to be a saxophone player’. I had to learn clarinet first, which wasn't my dream, but eventually got hold of a saxophone when I was about twelve.

The area of the country I'm from, which is North Yorkshire and close to Harrogate, has got a decent music scene but it's incredibly insular, so I didn't go see lots of music during my early teens. At around the age I started sixth form I started looking further afield to gigs in other cities, and it was amazing. I was playing in quite a few bands and ensembles at the time, and the only thing I knew for certain was that I didn’t want to give it up. I knew of older friends who were in bands – they'd go to university and they'd stop playing. So I went to Leeds College of Music and that was the proper start of the journey, really.

The Bear And The Wolf is your debut. What was the inspiration behind its creation, and why now? 

I think it was a long time coming. I always had a real block against writing music when I was doing my undergrad and really doubted my writing ability, but I think as I've gotten older and more experienced it's improved a lot.

Coming out of COVID, I did an absolute ton of function work, which was great – you get to travel a lot which is nice – but it felt like I’d maybe grown distant from the reason I’d started doing music in the first place. So I set myself the aim at the start of 2024 that I was going to record some music of my own and book a recording studio, which was a good incentive to start writing. I dug out some of my old compositions, started writing some new ones, and thought about who I like playing with. I lived with Billy Maros at the time, so he did guitar. I'd also been hanging out with Jack Yardley, who's the drummer, and Max Kahn, who's the bass player, and they play really nicely together.

I took them to the studio after we did a gig the night before and everything kind of snowballed from then. We started with an EP and toured last summer around the north of England, but it was my first tour as a bandleader and people began asking for physical copies of the music that I didn’t have. I guess once you say it on stage  in front of people that an album is coming, you have to do it! So it feels like it was a very natural progression, but it feels like it's the right time.

You mention your ensemble –  what did they bring to the project? Were your relationships with them an important part of why you chose them to join you?

Yeah, absolutely. Max, Jack and myself all have connections to Leeds: at various points we were all studying there. Max was at Leeds Uni and Jack was at Leeds College of Music, but he'd finished the year I started. I didn't know Jack for a few years, but I'd seen Max playing around town with other bands he was in and always thought he sounded great. I met Jack through a music night and loved his playing. When I moved to London in 2019, I bumped into Max and Jack and really enjoyed their company. 

I think that's the most important thing, that you can hear in the way we play: we actually like each other – there’s real friendship there. What I like the most about playing with those two specifically is that they bring such a vibe with the way they play together. I left a lot of space in the writing, so it allows the personality to come out. 

With Billy, I met him in 2019. We got chatting at a gig, became Facebook friends later that year, and then I ended up living with him for six years! Billy's a genius: he's such a great guitar player, but more importantly, musician. And again, like Jack and Max, he just slots really well into what the identity of the band is. He knows when to play and when not to, and it just makes it super exciting. With it being a quartet rather than a quintet, the role of the guitar player has such breadth: laying down rhythm whilst playing the harmony, as well as being a frontline player. He just does everything in such a great way, all whilst still sounding uniquely like himself.

Can you tell me more about the album title?

Well, I enjoy video gaming! I'd say I'm quite a casual gamer; I'll play around one a year and just make sure that I really enjoy it. It's a nice way to just turn off from everything and get absorbed into a story. Some of them are so long now that it's more detailed than a film – it’s like a book that you walk through. I was playing one of my favourites called God of War Ragnarök, and the trophy you get for 100% completion was called ‘The Bear and the Wolf’. So when I got that I just thought it was a really cool title for something, and made a point to remember it. 

When the tune came into existence, I had that in mind for a title. But when other people have heard it, they've projected their own meaning onto it, which is nice. The two quite distinct melodies in that tune could represent a bear being a bit more stoic, and then a wolf being quite playful, and that relationship. I imagine the ending of that tune a little like the ending of Disney’s Jungle Book, when Bagheera and Baloo are walking away from leaving Mowgli. I kind of picture it like that, that they're going off into the sunset together. 

‘Cascade’ opens the record with a strong sense of movement and momentum. Why did that feel like the right introduction to the album?

It felt like I could create a very nice journey for the listener by starting with ‘Cascade’. I think it's quite different to the rest of the tunes, because it's a lot of saxophone. I really have the band as an accompaniment in that until the end, where drums take a solo to finish the piece, and I feel it kind of draws people in with the repetitive guitar part. It keeps going the whole way through – it's quite trancey just hearing that over and over again. It makes me sit forward, and that's why I've chosen to go with that one. There’s plenty of tension and release, but not through crazy note clashing, rather from staying on the same thing for so long before finally moving on.

I understand that John Coltrane and his quartet is a fairly big influence for you. What is it that draws you to him and that sound in particular?

I think for most sax players John Coltrane is a huge influence, but a lot of what I love the most about that band with the Elvin, Jimmy Garrison and McCoy line up is the swagger with the way they play that music and the drive of intensity and risk taking.

There’s an emotional connection to it – they’re not pretending to be something with the notes they play or decisions they make. The risk-taking fearlessness of it is just really admirable; that same band that plays with Wayne Shorter on his album Juju is also unbelievable. Most of my favorite players put together amazing bands and just have that devil-may-care attitude to it. It's not too polished while sounding perfect. I think the two tunes that really embody that are ‘Prelude to the Departed’ and ‘P&P’, as there's a lot of that spiritual sound in there. 

‘P&P’ is dedicated to mentors of yours – what impact did they have on your musical development?

‘P&P’ stands for Paul and Peaky, or Peaky and Paul. They were some mentors of mine when I was a teenager; they ran a youth band that I used to play in, and Ian Peake was the conductor and Paul was the visionary financier of it. 

This group only existed because Ian was a saxophone teacher with loads of saxophone pupils, but there weren't enough spaces in the local ensembles for them all to join. So he and Paul decided to do an all-saxophone big band, which sounds pretty crazy. And yet, at the time, it was the best thing ever. I absolutely loved it. 

I was completely on the ‘you don't miss the brass’ hype train. But now looking back, maybe we did miss the brass a little bit! It was all saxophones with a rhythm section, and I started playing with them when I was twelve – I was definitely far too young to have joined because most people I think were fifteen or sixteen, but they let me in. It was probably the most formative music experience for me; I was so keen. I was taking parts from Alto 1 that the older kids were playing so I could practise them to come back the next week and be able to do it a little bit. I was really lucky to have an amazing relationship with both of them. 

Sadly, they’ve both passed away now. Ian died in a mountaineering accident in 2017, and Paul passed away last year after a battle with cancer. Paul was especially inspirational because the whole time I knew him, he was in a wheelchair, but he was the most able-bodied, strong-minded person I've ever come across. He gave me a lot of time that he didn't have to. I remember he loved music so much and he would offer to take people to gigs all the time.

By the time I was sixteen he was still doing it, but it was only me and him going. We'd drive a couple of hours to go see a show in Newcastle, or head to Leeds to see Snarky Puppy for the first time. When we were at Paul's memorial last year, an ex-band member said that seeing Paul and Ian together was the first time he'd ever seen two guys being open with how much they loved each other. Looking back, I agree. It's only recently that it's been more okay for adult men to express their emotions to their friends like that, and seeing that relationship I wanted to write a piece for them that summarised their relationship. It starts off super swinging, getting along, making things happen, and then (I know they wouldn't mind me saying this because they constantly had arguments!) it gets a bit hot-headed by the ending where it kind of goes into a proggy section. 

Stockholm is another influence – how does that place inspire you musically?

I visited Stockholm for the first time in 2023 with a friend of mine. It was mid-January, and rather than choosing somewhere hot we chose somewhere even colder than the UK, but neither of us had been to Scandinavia and we were both interested in Norse mythology and Viking history.

Stockholm's made up of lots of little islands that make the city, and in the centre, one of the islands had a really cultural area called Södermalm, and that's what the island was named after. I had a really great time on the island, and I ended up meeting my now girlfriend that night too. 

I came home feeling pretty ecstatic, so I just had this tune that formulated in my head. I sat down at the piano and managed to push my way through this vision and figured I’d name the piece ‘Södermalm’ as it was totally inspired by the weekend  – it's quite a joyous tune.

Can you tell us about the album cover?

This artwork was done by an artist called Esauteric. It's a custom piece. There was a lot of soul searching of ‘what does the album mean?’ and ‘what does it represent?’ – and we've kind of managed to surmise it in this painting. There's a lot going on there, a lot of detail.

Any live performances?

The week after the album releases, we've got three dates that act as the bulk of the tour. On the 1st of July we're at Matt & Phred's in Manchester, and then on the 2nd July we're playing in Harrogate at a place called Crema Coffee, which is close to my hometown. Then on the 3rd July, we're at The Zeffirelli in Ambleside, and then the album launch show is taking place on the 18th August, which is at Pizza Express Live, Holborn.

The Bear And The Wolf is available from 26th June on Whittington Records, in association with ECN Music.