HEARING the Birmingham-born tenor saxophonist Xhosa Cole playing in a trio context at the Vortex in Dalston, with the precise, ever-inventive and complex rhythmic drumming of Mark Sanders and bassist Neil Charles’s deep power and bow artistry, every listener understood the swinging verve of his horn, his circles of sound and his ability to combine familiar melody with new pathways of improvisation, as the Vortex opened its doors and the trio drew human fire and inspiration from the cosmos of humanity outside.

“I was born in Birmingham, at City Hospital in 1996. My mum was a youth worker and my dad a young people’s African storyteller,” he told me. “I liked all sorts of music as a teenager. One of my older brothers was a dancer, the other a musician. They exposed me to many different types of black contemporary music.

“I started learning saxophone at Andy Hamilton’s Ladywood Community Music School at 11 and played a little keyboard before that. My teacher was Wizzard's keyboard player, who taught around Birmingham and was featured on I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day.