“BOTH versions of the piece were recorded live. Audiences and musicians felt a powerful solidarity and connection, both with the material and Robert Wyatt’s beautiful performance of the song, ringing out like the final precious traces of a beloved voice played again and again to try to assuage the heartache of absence. I think we all believed in the work.”

So declared alto-saxophonist, improviser and composer Caroline Kraabel about the recording of her album Last 1 Last 2  at London’s Cafe Oto in March 2016, with the proceeds of every record sold donated to refugee charities care4calais.org and utopia56.org.

Kraabel, born in California in 1961, the daughter of an engineer and university librarian, came to London as a teenager “because of punk. I started on saxophone in London, my first inspirations being Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman.”