Celebrating a jazz legend and a pioneering thinker
100 years since his birth, Tomorrow’s Warriors’ Nu Civilisation Orchestra honour the music of Miles Davis who soundtracked the acclaimed documentary ‘The Stuart Hall Project’
Saturday 3 October features jazz stars, pianist Peter Edwards and Mark Kavuma on trumpet, alongside a five-piece NU Civilisation Orchestra ensemble. Together, they present artist and writer John Akomfrah’s film ‘The Stuart Hall Project’ with Miles Davis’ soundtrack performed live.
Ahead of this powerful fusion of film, live music and cultural history, we take a deep dive to find out more.
“When I ask people where they’re from, I expect to be told an extremely long story.”
About ‘The Stuart Hall Project’
Stuart Hall (1932 – 2014) was a Jamaican-British academic, writer and cultural studies pioneer. He emigrated from Jamaica to the UK in 1951 to take up a place at Oxford University and became a founding figure of cultural studies with a resounding and ongoing influence on British intellectual life.
John Akomfrah’s acclaimed 2013 documentary, composed of film, music and photographs from the archives, is a fascinating portrait of the life and times of Stuart Hall. Layered with archival footage and Hall’s own reflections, the film explores identity, race, and belonging in a changing world.
His lifelong exploration of identity finds a powerful counterpart in the shifting musical eras of Miles Davis, performed live to illuminate each chapter of Hall’s journey.
More than an accompaniment, the Nu Civilisation Orchestra (NCO) ’s performance becomes an integral part of the experience – deepening the film’s resonance and creating a vivid dialogue between music, ideas, and cultural change.
“Miles Davis put his finger on my soul, and it never went away”
About Miles Davis’s music
Miles Davis was Stuart Hall’s favourite musician, famously describing Davis’s music on Desert Island Discs as representing “the sound of what cannot be”. Director John Akomfrah used Davis’s shifting musical styles over the decades to track the political and cultural changes that Hall lived through. The music acts as an emotional and sonic map of the 20th century, mirroring Hall’s own complex ideas on race, identity, and the diaspora. As the music evolves from the cool jazz of the late 1950s into the avant-garde and electric fusion of the late 1960s and 1970s, it mirrors the shifting political landscapes, global upheavals, and the birth of youth counterculture.
About Tomorrow’s Warriors and the Nu Civilisation Orchestra
Brainchild of Tomorrow’s Warriors Artistic Director Dr Gary Crosby OBE, Nu Civilisation Orchestra (NCO) is a world class professional jazz orchestra. NCO was initially established in 2008 as ‘Tomorrow’s Warriors Jazz Orchestra’ to provide a platform for one of Gary’s most talented protégés – pianist/composer, Peter Edwards. The goal was to recreate Duke Ellington’s exquisite, yet rarely performed, ‘The Queen’s Suite’. The piece was met with such enthusiasm from audiences and musicians alike that Crosby felt compelled to establish the Orchestra as a permanent ensemble.
Since then, NCO has built a reputation for excellence and diversity in its members, its repertoire and its artistic collaborations; a shapeshifting ensemble that reinvents itself with every project.
NCO has performed widely across the UK, including a BBC Proms debut in 2019 and a major 2021 national tour celebrating Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On’. The Orchestra has delivered acclaimed reinterpretations of Ellington’s ‘Queen’s Suite’, Joni Mitchell’s ‘Hejira and Mingus’, Bowie’s ‘Aladdin Sane’, and Stan Getz’s ‘Focus’ with saxophonist Nubya Garcia.
Recent highlights include collaborations with Clod Ensemble on Mingus’ ‘The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady’, joining Chaka Khan at the Southbank Centre’s Meltdown Festival, and performing with Arthur Verocai at the Barbican.
Tomorrow’s Warriors and NCO have a long relationship with Turner Sims, co-producing the schools-based music education project ‘The Jazz Ticket’ in 2018 along with Southampton Music Hub. Delivered in partnership with leading venues across nine regions across England, the project culminated with a special concert featuring the Nu Civilisation Orchestra performing a new music commission from Turner Sims Southampton, supported by the PRS Foundation’s New Music Biennial. ‘A Journey with the Giants of Jazz’ by the award-winning pianist/composer, Peter Edwards, premiered at Turner Sims in 2017.
About Peter Edwards
Peter Edwards is a composer, pianist and musical director whose ‘guileless, soulful music…[is] full of emphatic chording, Latin grooves and romantic, cinematic themes’ (Guardian). He composes for stage and screen, directs the Nu Civilisation Orchestra and leads his own trio. He has worked with acclaimed artists such as Chaka Khan, Courtney Pine, Mica Paris and Zara McFarlane.
About Mark Kavuma
Named Jazz Instrumentalist of the Year at the Jazz FM Awards 2025, trumpeter, composer and bandleader Mark Kavuma has established himself as one of the leading voices in British jazz. Renowned for his distinctive trumpet sound – combining lyricism, warmth and soulful expression – Kavuma has built a reputation for creating music that is both deeply rooted in the jazz tradition and alive with the energy of London’s contemporary scene. As founder of The Banger Factory, winner of Ensemble of the Year at the Parliamentary Jazz Awards, Kavuma has brought together a collective of exceptional musicians united by a shared commitment to creativity, community and musical excellence. Known for their infectious live performances, the band blends jazz, soul, gospel, blues and African diasporic influences into a powerful and uplifting sound that has become a hallmark of the UK jazz landscape.
Book your ticket for Nu Civilisation Orchestra: The Stuart Hall Project on Saturday 3 October here, and join us at 7pm for a pre-concert talk to discuss Stuart Hall’s legacy.
