Jane Harrison finds out more about Chris Hodgkins, who joined a band at 17 and went on to co-found the Welsh Jazz Festival

TRUMPETER Chris Hodgkins is a past master at creating mood with his music, his most ambitious album to date being Boswell's London Journal.

With 15 tunes, co-composed with Eddie Harvey, he evokes the emotional and sometimes tortuous life of James Boswell, best known as Dr Samuel Johnson's biographer and keen diarist.

With his quartet (Alison Rayner, Max Brittain and Diane McLoughlin) Chris has produced a work of art, which he described as "the icing on the cake" after it was named Jazz CD of the Week in the Evening Standard. The reviewer wrote: "It's his best album yet, a tuneful tribute to Dr Johnson's biographer, craftily arranged and gracefully played.

He plays in the unfashionable classic style of Ruby Braff and the great Louis Armstrong."

It closely followed two previous works by the Chris Hodgkins Trio (without Diane) called Present Continuous in 2005 and Future Continuous a year later.

His trio plays a mixture of mainstream and swing, ranging from the little-known to old favourites such as Somewhere Over the Rainbow and original compositions.

Chris, 58, of Bedford Road, West Ealing, is perhaps more popularly known for playing at the Ealing Jazz Festival or even as director for 23 years of Jazz Services, a national organisation backed by Arts Council England, which helps budding and existing musicians with anything from touring to publishing.

Jazz struck a chord with Chris from a very early age.

He says: "My father was a congregational minister in Cardiff. One brother, John, played the trumpet in a band and the other played the piano. I used to hear all the practising and Louis Armstrong records. I was immersed in music from the age of three. That music (jazz) was unbelievable. It was like being hit by a barn door."

He started collecting jazz records from second-hand shops and soon realised just listening to the music he loved was second fiddle.

He says: "John said to me 'You don't just want to listen to it. You want to play'. He bought me a trumpet at 15 years old, taught me the basics and I went on from there."

He joined a band, the youngest member at 17, and gained experience from the other musicians doing the pub and club circuits. He practised every night after school but eventually left to join the Welsh Hospital Board.

He says: "I just wanted to play, so only worked to keep body and soul together, but the organisational skills I learned helped me much later. We used to start with classics and then move to modern jazz. We were a rare breed when everyone was listening to the Beatles."

In 1974 he co-founded the Welsh Jazz Festival and was instrumental, four years later, in launching the Welsh Jazz Society. By now his reputation had gone before him and he was doing slots around TV chat shows and touring the UK and Europe. The Chris Hodgkins Band was supporting the likes of Buddy Tate and Humphrey Lyttelton.

He recalls: "A lot of young people were still listening to jazz. They found it exciting and different."

In spite of his first love, Chris always felt he had missed out on his education, so embarked on an HND Business Studies course at Ealing College.

He says: "I only had one A-level and remember reading the Financial Times and not understanding a word. Your mind is a muscle; you have to make it work. It was like breaking the sound barrier and I got a distinction."

In 2002, he was presented with the prestigious Services to Jazz Award at the BBC Jazz Awards and in 2005 won the Best Website category in the first Parliamentary Jazz Awards.

Still doing the 'odd gig' as well as taking centre stage at Ealing Jazz Festival, Chris feels jazz, quite rightly, has moved with the times and gained wider appeal.

Chris, who still practises every night and has a pocket trumpet at the office, says: "We need to find ways to make it more family-friendly. There are clubs where children over 10 can go free.

"Young people may not know they are listening to jazz, they just like it because it appeals to them. They want something new and fresh and will give it a whirl.

"The whole image of smoky jazz clubs has gone. It's all about the relationship between the audience and the band."