“AT THE age of 14 I saw Jimi Hendrix and it changed my life.” Surprising words, perhaps, from a baritone saxophonist steeped in free jazz improvisation.

Not so. He recalls his sailor eldest brother who used to bring home instruments from his travels and that’s when Alan Wilkinson first picked up a guitar.

At Leeds College of Art he “pursued painting with a passion” until he became disillusioned with the idea of producing “objects for the bourgeois market.” Gradually, music took over and he began listening to US jazzmen like Coltrane, Shepp and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. But it was hearing Peter Brotzmann with the Globe Unity Orchestra that had a huge effect.