Cassie Kinoshi’s compositions appear on her SoundCloud in a couple of unassuming annual collections. The six-minute clips are given generic titles like “Compositions: Instrumental Showreel 2020.” But beneath their utilitarian form lie collections of substantial creativity. “Afronaut,” a gritty Afrofuturist track from the Mercury Award-nominated SEED Ensemble, sits alongside “If She Could Dance Naked Under Palm Trees,” her Nina Simone-inspired piece for the London Symphony Orchestra. Scores for the BalletBoyz meet brass ensemble pieces written while studying at London’s Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. As well as her ongoing work as a composer, Kinoshi is a fixture in the much-lauded London jazz scene. If you missed Cassie on sax in SEED, you can find her KOKOROKO, an Afrobeat collective run by trumpeter Sheila Maurice-Grey. There’s also Nérija, a female-fronted sextet featuring, among others, tenor saxophonist Nubya Garcia (whose recent release Kinoshi also appears on).
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