Biography
Emma-Jean Thackray stands among the U.K.’s true musical riddles. She juggles an array of roles as trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, composer, bandleader, producer, beat-maker, radio presenter, videographer, club DJ, and Worldwide FM broadcaster while directing her own Movementt imprint beneath the Warp Records umbrella. Her work upholds a spiritually centered aesthetic that draws directly from 1970s jazz-fusion and jazz-funk, then fuses those influences with broken beat and house to produce a distinctly dancefloor-focused strain of contemporary jazz. She has summarized her guiding principle with the statement “Everything I release is based around the mantra ‘music to move the mind, move the body, move the soul.’”
Her first releases—the 2016 Walrus EP, titled after her quintet, and the 2018 Ley Lines collection—earned swift praise from Gilles Peterson, Theo Parrish, and Jamie Cullum. The Rain Dance EP arrived in March 2020; in June she issued the live-in-studio, direct-to-vinyl Um Yang/Nightdreamer EP. Following her appearance on BBC Two’s Later…. With Jools Holland, Warp signed her, and the debut album Yellow surfaced in July 2021, reaching the top of the British jazz charts.
Although Thackray now resides in Catford in southeast London, she grew up amid the rural northern landscapes of Yorkshire between Wakefield and Leeds, a region long known for brass-band traditions. As a child she took up the second-hand cornet her parents purchased from a music shop and performed in a local brass ensemble that, she maintains, instructed her in producing a resonant tone on the instrument as well as in ensemble playing. By age thirteen she held the position of principal cornetist within that band. At fourteen she taught herself trumpet and piano; guitars, bass, assorted samplers, synthesizers, and keyboards followed later. While searching for brass-band recordings she encountered Gil Evans’s arrangement of Miles Davis’s interpretation of Joaquín Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez” on Sketches of Spain—an experience that both astonished her and redirected her artistic path.
Thackray had already absorbed nearly every style she met, ranging from the 1980s soul and pop favored by her mother to the jazz-Afrobeat meeting of Fela Kuti and Roy Ayers on Music of Many Colours and onward to folk and blues. Her father’s lessons in Taoism and meditation further shaped her sensibility. After the encounter with Davis and Evans she began an avid pursuit of jazz recordings.
Following secondary school she enrolled at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama to study with composer and pianist Keith Tippett. Concurrently she explored the rhythmic constructions of Afro-futurist hip-hop figures such as J Dilla and Madlib together with Detroit techno and Chicago house, all while pursuing studies in hard bop, improvisation, and classical repertoire. Upon completing a bachelor’s degree in music she moved to London for a master’s in jazz orchestral composition at Trinity Laban, where she studied alongside Moses Boyd and Nubya Garcia, yet continued to sense her outsider status. After receiving the advanced degree she retained her brass-band origins, assembled the Walrus quintet, and in 2016 released a self-titled eight-track EP—mixed by David Holmes—that featured brass including tuba, B-3 organ, Wurlitzer, synthesizers, and drums. The ensemble delivered widely acclaimed performances throughout London.
Although Thackray valued collaborative music-making, she located her essential voice while working alone inside an instrument-filled home studio in a South London apartment. For the 2018 Ley Lines EP she performed every part herself, even introducing a clarinet she had first touched merely ten minutes before recording. The recording drew strong acclaim, leading to an invitation to perform with and conduct the London Symphony Orchestra at the London Jazz Festival. She also appeared at Winter Jazz Fest in New York and on several occasions at Glastonbury. She participated in Makaya McCraven’s London workshop bands with Junius Paul, Angel Bat Dawid, Nubya Garcia, and Theon Cross, contributed the track “Too Shy” to his Where We Come From (Chicago x London Mixtape), and in 2019 issued a 12-inch version of that track backed by a Gilles Peterson remix. She toured Africa and South America, where she met and collaborated with Hermeto Paschoal in São Paulo.
Early in 2020 Thackray established the Movementt label and released the four-track Rain Dance EP in March, complete with two videos. The pressing sold out immediately and was later named by NME among the year’s standout releases. In June she followed with the cassette single Um Yang/Nightdreamer. That autumn, after fielding offers from multiple labels, she chose Warp yet retained Movementt as an imprint. In July 2021 she issued the self-produced Yellow, her first full-length album. Conceived to evoke a “psychedelic trip,” the record merged the jazz-funk fusion of George Duke, Donald Byrd, and Ayers with Parliament Funkadelic, the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra, and the lush orchestration of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds within a house framework. One week after its release the album ascended to number one on the U.K. jazz albums chart.
Her first releases—the 2016 Walrus EP, titled after her quintet, and the 2018 Ley Lines collection—earned swift praise from Gilles Peterson, Theo Parrish, and Jamie Cullum. The Rain Dance EP arrived in March 2020; in June she issued the live-in-studio, direct-to-vinyl Um Yang/Nightdreamer EP. Following her appearance on BBC Two’s Later…. With Jools Holland, Warp signed her, and the debut album Yellow surfaced in July 2021, reaching the top of the British jazz charts.
Although Thackray now resides in Catford in southeast London, she grew up amid the rural northern landscapes of Yorkshire between Wakefield and Leeds, a region long known for brass-band traditions. As a child she took up the second-hand cornet her parents purchased from a music shop and performed in a local brass ensemble that, she maintains, instructed her in producing a resonant tone on the instrument as well as in ensemble playing. By age thirteen she held the position of principal cornetist within that band. At fourteen she taught herself trumpet and piano; guitars, bass, assorted samplers, synthesizers, and keyboards followed later. While searching for brass-band recordings she encountered Gil Evans’s arrangement of Miles Davis’s interpretation of Joaquín Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez” on Sketches of Spain—an experience that both astonished her and redirected her artistic path.
Thackray had already absorbed nearly every style she met, ranging from the 1980s soul and pop favored by her mother to the jazz-Afrobeat meeting of Fela Kuti and Roy Ayers on Music of Many Colours and onward to folk and blues. Her father’s lessons in Taoism and meditation further shaped her sensibility. After the encounter with Davis and Evans she began an avid pursuit of jazz recordings.
Following secondary school she enrolled at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama to study with composer and pianist Keith Tippett. Concurrently she explored the rhythmic constructions of Afro-futurist hip-hop figures such as J Dilla and Madlib together with Detroit techno and Chicago house, all while pursuing studies in hard bop, improvisation, and classical repertoire. Upon completing a bachelor’s degree in music she moved to London for a master’s in jazz orchestral composition at Trinity Laban, where she studied alongside Moses Boyd and Nubya Garcia, yet continued to sense her outsider status. After receiving the advanced degree she retained her brass-band origins, assembled the Walrus quintet, and in 2016 released a self-titled eight-track EP—mixed by David Holmes—that featured brass including tuba, B-3 organ, Wurlitzer, synthesizers, and drums. The ensemble delivered widely acclaimed performances throughout London.
Although Thackray valued collaborative music-making, she located her essential voice while working alone inside an instrument-filled home studio in a South London apartment. For the 2018 Ley Lines EP she performed every part herself, even introducing a clarinet she had first touched merely ten minutes before recording. The recording drew strong acclaim, leading to an invitation to perform with and conduct the London Symphony Orchestra at the London Jazz Festival. She also appeared at Winter Jazz Fest in New York and on several occasions at Glastonbury. She participated in Makaya McCraven’s London workshop bands with Junius Paul, Angel Bat Dawid, Nubya Garcia, and Theon Cross, contributed the track “Too Shy” to his Where We Come From (Chicago x London Mixtape), and in 2019 issued a 12-inch version of that track backed by a Gilles Peterson remix. She toured Africa and South America, where she met and collaborated with Hermeto Paschoal in São Paulo.
Early in 2020 Thackray established the Movementt label and released the four-track Rain Dance EP in March, complete with two videos. The pressing sold out immediately and was later named by NME among the year’s standout releases. In June she followed with the cassette single Um Yang/Nightdreamer. That autumn, after fielding offers from multiple labels, she chose Warp yet retained Movementt as an imprint. In July 2021 she issued the self-produced Yellow, her first full-length album. Conceived to evoke a “psychedelic trip,” the record merged the jazz-funk fusion of George Duke, Donald Byrd, and Ayers with Parliament Funkadelic, the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra, and the lush orchestration of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds within a house framework. One week after its release the album ascended to number one on the U.K. jazz albums chart.
Albums
Weirdo
2025
Yellow
2022
Yellower Vol. 2
2022
Talking Therapy
2022
Yellower Vol. 1
2022
Rain Dance
2020
Ley Lines
2018
Walrus
2016
Singles
