Marc Hadley is mainly known as a “career saxophonist” having trained in Jazz/Rock at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and also holding a Masters in Ethnomusicology from SOAS.
Starting at school in Wimbledon, SW London, he played music in the mid 1970’s influenced by the Soft Machine, Hatfield & the North and Gong, while also as a 17 year old student of the alto sax, mesmerised by Charlie Parker. The discipline acquired from playing bebop and hard bop took him from “Jazz Rock” into session recording and the London Jazz /world music scene in the 1980’s and 90’s.
His path crossed with bassist Jack Monck; that musical association brought him into contact with Pip Pyle, Phil Miller and ultimately Richard Sinclair. For many years they collaborated in a “Canterbury” influenced Anglo-Dutch band, The Relatives, which in 2012-2013 toured and recorded the album “Virtually”.
Phil Miller was part of that project and the legacy of that and further collaborations surfaces here in Marc’s project “How to cut water.” The production of this album and “Virtually” reflects Marc’s other career facet, as he has a long parallel history of working in the recording industry as an engineer and producer.
Marc moved from London to Cornwall in 2004, and the lineup of musicians involved in ‘How to cut water’ reflects over twenty years of performance and recording collaborations there, particularly stints of work with the Kneehigh Theatre and its former MD, Jim Carey, as well as the link into the seminal Cornish tradition revival music of Dalla. A further set of connections stems from former music teaching roles at Dartington College of Arts and AMATA, Falmouth University.