ADJUNCT Ensemble is the brand-new project of Belfast composer, Jamie Thompson (previously James Joys).

Emerging somewhat counterintuitively out of 2020’s lockdowns, ADJUNCT began life as a remote ensemble of geographically dispersed artists working on a series of fragments and experiments. Having little formal training in jazz, Jamie uses the term ‘ADJUNCT’ to express its being neither one thing nor another because it might be both and neither.

ADJUNCT Ensemble will release the first instalment of a nine-album cycle in 2022 entitled ‘Sovereign Bodies / Ritual Taxonomy’. Collaborating with a turntablist, operatic soprano, and jazz/punk trio, it explores the affordances and outer fringes of writing, mixing, and arranging. In September 2021, Jamie was part of London’s ‘Serious Live’s’ Take Five talent development programme. Working for a week under composer and saxophonist Jason Yarde and collaborating with outstanding musicians he decided to set up ADJUNCT Ensemble as a live project.

The current live ensemble features Elliot Galvin (Dinosaur) on piano and synths, spoken word poet Felicia Olusanya (Felispeaks), Stephen Davis (Anthony Braxton, Alexander Hawkins Ensemble) on drums and percussion, bassist John Pope (John Pope Quintet, Archipelago), Sam Comerford (Thunderblender) on saxophone and flute, and Mike Soper (Mike Soper Trio) on trumpet.

ADJUNCT Ensemble quarries the cleft at which graphic and traditional notation, open form, spoken word poetry, electronics, deep groove, experimental music production, and creative improvised music meet. It’s in the processes of cleaving together and apart these approaches that ADJUNCT’s music emerges.