Emma-Jean Thackray

Born in Leeds in northern England, Emma-Jean Thackray trained from an early age in Yorkshire brass bands before studying jazz at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and orchestral composition at Trinity Laban in London. Based in south London, she has developed since the mid-2010s a musical approach at the crossroads of British jazz, funk, soul, broken beat and a brass-tinged psychedelic pop—often conceived and recorded by her. After her first EP, Walrus (2016), she refined a style in which improvisation, repetitive grooves and luminous harmonies coexist with a carefully constructed producer’s approach, notably on Ley Lines (2018) and then Rain Dance and Um Yang (2020). Her collaboration with Makaya McCraven on the single Too Shy / Run Dem accompanied her emergence within a jazz scene open to exchanges between London, Chicago and club music. In 2021 she released the album Yellow, on which she plays most of the instruments and blends vocals, brass, keyboards and funk-jazz pulses. She has also conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, composed for film with the soundtrack to the short film Erax (2022), and continued her DJ and radio work on Worldwide FM, NTS and BBC Radio. In 2025 Emma-Jean Thackray released Weirdo, an album entirely written, produced, performed and mixed by her.