Joe Armon-Jones
Visiting Professor
Joe Armon-Jones is a London based producer, composer and keyboard player who creates in an uncompromising, free-flowing, experimental way, combining jazz, dub, hip-hop, funk and soul.
Joe launched his own label, Aquarii Records, in 2021 with a vision to create “a home for the music that is around me; somewhere it can live and somewhere it can flourish”.
Between his highly acclaimed solo work and his work with the Mercury Prize winning Ezra Collective, Joe Armon-Jones is at the epicentre of the London underground scene. A collaborative theme runs consistently throughout his work and such unions have included: Obongjayar, the late Tony Allen, Jehst, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Nubya Garcia, Greentea Peng, Moses Boyd, Ego Ella May, Oscar Jerome, Mick Jenkins, Speakers Corner Quartet and Mala to name a few.
Armon-Jones’ second album, “Turn to Clear View”, was hailed as “an instant classic” and named by TIME Magazine as one of the “Top 10 Albums of 2019”. He is a two-time nominee for “Best Jazz Act” at the Jazz FM Awards as well as the MOBO Awards.
June 2023 saw Joe Armon-Jones reconnect with long time production partner Maxwell Owin to release their second shared album, ‘Archetype’. The first collaboration between the pair since 2017s Idiom, Archetype was 6 years in the making and offers a musical journey as considered. Mixmag hails it as one of the top 10 albums of 2023 so far. Armon-Jones shares: “Archetype is the prototype, the original that is now imitated. This was the inspirational theme running through this whole album process: drawing from older music that we consider to be the Archetype of what we do now, in order to move our sound forward.”