Rowan Hudson plays jazz piano. As soon as he reached his fourteenth birthday he began to play publicly at a café in his home city of Wells, Somerset. “I decided that I wanted somewhere else to play rather than just playing at home,” said Rowan. “I read in the local paper that this café was opening so I thought I would get in and ask them before anyone else did”. Quite gutsy for a thirteen year old.
The Piano Café in Wells opened as Rowan hit his fourteenth birthday and they agreed to give him a trial – five numbers the following Saturday morning. He was booked. He started by playing for two hours on alternate Saturday mornings, but now plays every week and occasionally for functions at the café under the large photographs of Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday hanging on the café walls.
Rowan was born in 1993 in West Hampstead, London but the family moved to Somerset just one year later. His father had played drums in his younger days, his mother works as an actress, and an uncle lectures in music at Glamorgan University, but jazz has not really featured in the family background. There is however a great stack of vinyl recordings that belongs to Rowan’s father and Rowan started dipping into this some years ago. The collection is mainly 1960s and 1970s popular music, but it was the 1960s albums that captured Rowan’s interest despite the current popular music played by his friends.
Rowan has a number of guitars. He has also, like his father, experimented with playing drums, but it has been the piano that he has identified with most strongly. “I started piano lessons when I was seven,” he remembers. “I think my father wanted me to have the opportunity to learn that he didn’t have when he was young.” Since then, Rowan has had lessons weekly with Karen Squance in Wells, and practises for around two hours a day. “I guess I began to take it seriously about five years ago,” he says.
The involvement with jazz began when he discovered an LP of 
Soft Machine amongst his father’s collection, an album that bridged popular music and jazz with modal and electric fusions. The learning that followed has, amazingly, been almost entirely self-researched. The music department at Rowan’s school has been good in terms of general music education, but has not been proactive in encouraging Rowan’s evident jazz talent. Instead, he has researched jazz on the internet and bought jazz albums through Ebay, gradually building up a collection of sheet music and CDs by Coltrane, Brubeck, Miles Davis and others. From these he takes his inspiration and both at home and at the café, develops his repertoire and improvisational technique. Although her own background is not in jazz, Rowan’s piano teacher, Karen, is greatly supportive, looking at the jazz pieces he wants to play and discussing how to approach them.
His interest in 1960s music continues alongside and this gives Rowan his only current opportunity to play organ with other friends who are musicians – bass, drums and sax - when they are able to rehearse in a garage somewhere near Wells cathedral.
Rowan's band 'Satellites and I' - Evie Philips (sax),
Angus Rankine (drums), Rowan Hudson (keyboards), 2009.
Evie Philips 2009
In 2009, approaching his sixteenth birthday, Rowan is about to take his GCSE exams in Music, History, Religion, Philosophy and Art. He will go on to take his ‘A’ Levels at Strode College where his subjects will be Music, Music Technology, History and Film Studies. Strode has a thriving, active music department and also provides a base for the Centre of Somerset Youth Jazz Orchestra (COSYJO).
Although he is leaving his options open, Rowan is realistic about the future. Right now he is wanting to keep going his gigs at the Piano Café as they offer a great opportunity to build his experience and technique: “People will sometimes come and ask for tunes I don’t know,” he says. “But I usually say I’ll go away and learn them.” He would like to get together with other musicians interested in playing jazz, particularly drums, bass and sax, and Strode College should offer him that opportunity. Whether he will go on to higher education at a music college remains to be seen, but Rowan is realistic about his career. “I will probably need to get a job to support me so that I can play my music,” he says. “Even if that job is something ordinary”.
Here is a talented young pianist who loves his music and has the confidence and initiative to make his own opportunities. It will be interesting to see how his career develops over the coming months and years – he should do well – make a note of the name.
© Sandy Brown Jazz 2009-2015