Graeme Wilson

Graeme Wilson is a British saxophonist, composer and researcher whose musical work connects jazz, collective improvisation, composition and interdisciplinary performance. A founding member of the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, he has performed and recorded with ensembles in the United Kingdom and abroad, including collaborations with Fred Frith, George Lewis, Marilyn Crispell and Evan Parker. His saxophone playing is heard in small groups, large improvising ensembles and projects involving moving images and visual art.

He has written for saxophone quartets and jazz orchestras, including commissions for John Warren's Voice of the North Jazz Orchestra, and has worked with musicians such as Raymond MacDonald and Andy Champion. Wilson has also published research on the psychology and social processes of improvisation, examining how musicians negotiate identity, agency and collective musical decisions. His book The Art of Becoming, co-written with Raymond MacDonald, was published by Oxford University Press in 2020.

On Creative Sources, Wilson appears on Light in Dark Corners (CS098), a four-saxophone recording made in Glasgow in 2005 with Markus Heinze, Christoph Reiserer and Raymond MacDonald; Poetics (CS114), recorded by the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra at CCA Glasgow in June 2007, featuring Wilson on tenor and baritone saxophones; and Cast of Thousands (CS353), a duo with Raymond MacDonald recorded at Alison House in Edinburgh in February 2016. The three albums show his movement between intimate saxophone dialogue and large-scale collective music.