MDX graduate wins Brit Award with jazz quintet Ezra Collective

Saxophonist James Mollison and bandmates won Group of the Year at prestigious music awards

Middlesex University BA Jazz graduate James Mollison is celebrating this week as a member of Ezra Collective which won Group of the Year at the Brit Awards 2025.

James, who graduated from his three-year course in 2017, plays the saxophone in the five-piece band which is tapping into the British jazz renaissance of the past decade and taking the music world by storm.

The latest accolade comes after Ezra Collective scored their first Top 10 album with last year’s ‘Dance, No One’s Watching’, became the first British jazz act to headline Wembley Arena, and the first jazz band in its 31-year history to win the Mercury Prize in 2023 with their second album ‘Where I’m Meant To Be’, a distinctive blend of jazz, reggae, Latin and Afrobeats.

Drawing inspiration from a variety of musical influences - dance music, hip-hop, Afrobeat, and reggae - music critics describe the band as essentially a jazz quintet.

The group consists of Femi Koleoso as drummer and bandleader, Joe Armon-Jones on keyboard, Ilfe Ogunjobi on trumpet, and Femi’s younger brother TJ on bass guitar, as well as James on saxophone. They originally came together in 2012 as teenagers in a youth band of Tomorrow’s Warriors, a charity based at the Southbank Centre in London that helps young jazz musicians develop their skills.

In his acceptance speech at the Brit Awards, Femi, who also plays drums for Damon Albarn’s band Gorillaz, praised ‘the great youth clubs, and the great teachers and the great schools that support young people playing music’. 

He added: “I want to shout out Tomorrow’s Warriors Youth Club. Every single youth club we spent time in up and down the country on tour, God bless every single one of you. Group of the Year is made by youth groups all over the country.”

Academics in the Music Department at Middlesex University were thrilled by the latest recognition for James and his bandmates.

Dr Brian Inglis, Acting Head of the School of Arts and Director of Music Programmes, said: “Following their ground-breaking win at the Mercury Music Prize in 2023 – the first time a jazz band won this prestigious award – I couldn’t be more excited and pleased to hear of James Mollison and the Ezra Collective’s win at the Brit Awards. This brings them right into the heart and centre of British music, which is absolutely where they should be.

“During James’s time studying with us at Middlesex University, music colleagues identified and nurtured his original voice as a saxophonist and supported his work with Ezra Collective. This is what we do – nurture individuality and support students’ careers. James and the Collective’s seemingly unstoppable success is a great testament to the kind of educational experiences our students get in Music at Middlesex.”

On winning the Mercury Prize, the judging panel said of Ezra Collective: “Virtuosity, community, listening to each other to work out where to go next, who knew that such seemingly old-fashioned values would come to the fore on the winning album.

“Now, ‘Where I’m Meant To Be’, with its touches of reggae, soul, Latin and Afrobeats, its call and response riffs and rhythmic intensity, is a landmark not only for jazz, but for contemporary music in general.”