PROFILE: Martin Hummel

Sebastian Scotney writes about Ubuntu’s founder German Magazine, Jazzthetik, “What keeps him going? “The honest answer is that I feel like the happiest person in the world because I do exactly what I love. The world has been good to me and I want to give something back. I pursue my passion and can't think of anything better. "

Sebatian Scotney

Martin Hummel, the head of the record label Ubuntu Music, shows a row of pencils on the profile of his LinkedIn website. "Why these pencils?" I asked him. This is a reference to his earlier career, a homage to the symbol of the most important award ceremony in the advertising industry, namely the D&AD (Design and Art Direction) award. The American began his career in advertising in London in the 1970s. This was followed by an interlude in South Africa, hence the name Ubuntu. “Then I came back to London in 1989 - and that's where I stayed,” he says. Hummel is originally from Montclair, New Jersey. His ancestors emigrated from Hamburg in the 18th century. Even as a toddler he had a passion for jazz. Was there a key experience? “Yes,” he says, “an original edition of Miles Davis'Kind of Blue was sent to my parents. I still have the record today. "

This love of jazz led him to launch the Ubuntu label in 2016. One of his early successful projects was the first edition of Chet Bakers Live in London . The group's bass player had recorded the concerts the band gave in a long-forgotten club in Covent Garden on a cassette recorder. The trumpeter was in top form, and DOWN BEAT called the album one of the best historical reissues of 2017. But that wasn't the only success: Hummel's specialty is that he celebrates the American jazz tradition, especially with albums from the New York All-Stars the saxophonist Eric Alexander and the late pianist Harold Mabern from Memphis.

Hummel also supports musicians from the British scene, for example saxophonist Allison Neale. Her album Quietly There with Peter Bernstein was very well received by the critics. The saxophonist Paul Booth also works with the label. During his international tours, for example with Steve Winwood and Rod Stewart, he composed the music for the album Travel Sketches . One of these songs has been streamed more than two million times. Paul Booth is currently bringing out a new series with Ubuntu called The Secret Sessions .

How do people react when Martin Hummel tells them that he runs a jazz label? “They usually express their condolences to me,” he laughs. What keeps him going? “The honest answer is that I feel like the happiest person in the world because I do exactly what I love. The world has been good to me and I want to give something back. I pursue my passion and can't think of anything better. "

Sebastian Scotney's website londonjazznews.com was nominated for a Parliamentary Jazz Award in 2021.

The late Harold Mabern and Martin Hummel, at Mabern’s last London performance.

FEATURE: Judith O’Higgins (Feature from German magazine JAZZTHETIK)

For JAZZTHETIK, Sebastian Scotney reports, “Surprises are normal for jazz, but here’s an unusual one: the Judith O’Higgins whose new album “His ‘n’ Hers” (Ubuntu/Orchard), in which she plays tenor saxophone alongside her husband Dave…is one and the same person as Judith O’Higgins the forensic pathologist who has told her extraordinary life-story in depth in a fascinating book “Spuren des Todes” (Fischer Verlag, 2013)”

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Judith O’Higgins

Judith O’Higgins

This is an English version of Sebastian’s regular “London Column” from the current issue (Nov-Dec 2020) of the German Magazine JAZZTHETIK, out on 28 October 2020:

Surprises are normal for jazz, but here’s an unusual one: the Judith O’Higgins whose new album “His ‘n’ Hers” (Ubuntu/Orchard), in which she plays tenor saxophone alongside her husband Dave…is one and the same person as Judith O’Higgins the forensic pathologist who has told her extraordinary life-story in depth in a fascinating book “Spuren des Todes” (Fischer Verlag, 2013)

She grew up as Judith Schröer in Lippstadt. She has happy memories of going to gigs as a teenager in the clubs in the surrounding area and hearing English bands like Loose Tubes and Itchy Fingers. She didn’t take up the saxophone until she was sixteen but progress was rapid. As a young medical student she joined the University Big Band in Münster, run by trumpeter Bob Lanese, for three decades lead trumpet with James Last. “He became my mentor, and it was he who planted the idea in my mind of moving away from Münster and to give Hamburg a try.” Once in Hamburg, and while doing a doctorate, she played in Lanese’s Downtown Big Band, sometimes alongside top saxophone players from NDR like Lutz Büchner, and once even the great Herb Geller. And there was more jazz in her life too: she lived in the Gärtnerstraße immediately above the Birdland club. “It was like my living room!”

Judith’s double life of forensic pathologist and saxophonist took a very different turn in 2005. She was working in Thailand as part of the team with the harrowing task of identifying the thousands of victims in the tragic aftermath of the tsunami. She wanted a change and was starting to look at jobs in New Zealand, when into her inbox popped an email from a saxophonist friend whom she had known previously as a member of Itchy Fingers, Dave O’Higgins. “And the rest is history,” she smiles. She moved to the UK in 2007, was married to Dave in 2009, has adapted her ways of working to the totally different structures of forensic pathology in the UK.

The new album evokes memories of tenor pairings of the past like Eddie Lockjaw Davis and Johnny Griffin. And the sessions? “We had fixed a date to record in April but through my work I could see how quickly the virus was taking hold and that a lockdown was imminent any day. What we needed was to get everything ready. And in the end we recorded just in time, on 21 March.” The sessions were against a deadline but what the album expresses is joy. And love. Which is perhaps the least surprising thing in this whole story.