It was a different kind of practice: thoughtful, free and natural. Hutchings was living in Kingston, in southwest London, close to the expanses of Richmond Park. Like Sonny Rollins, who would play his sax on the Williamsburg Bridge in New York, Hutchings took his instruments into the deserted public spaces and conducted his practice under trees, in fields and inside hollowed-out tree trunks, sharing snippets with audiences on Instagram.
“Rollins’s sound became bigger, because he was blowing into the noise of New York City, whereas when you’re in nature, your sound becomes smaller, and your dynamic range in small dynamics becomes a lot larger,” Hutchings said.
The main vehicle for these adventures in smallness wasn’t the saxophone, an instrument designed to project outward, but the naturally more inward flute. Or rather, flutes, plural. Hutchings brought a tall gig bag to our interview. It contained a selection from his growing collection, and he unveiled each flute from its protective floral cloths with a sense of tactile ritual. The instruments represented a range of origins and traditions, and were all handmade, mostly out of wood. All the flutes are keyless too, allowing for minute tunings, akin to a trombone or violin.
“The making and the playing go hand in hand,” Hutchings said. He has already constructed one instrument himself and has plans to travel to Japan to harvest a bamboo crop he planted to create his next from scratch.
Hutchings acquired his first shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute played vertically, while performing in Japan in 2019, but it wasn’t until the pandemic that he really had the time and head space to dedicate the necessary amount of energy toward it. “It’s an insanely difficult instrument, and the beauty is no one can actually get a sound out of it,” Hawkins said.
Even Hutchings struggled at first. (The shakuhachi embouchure requires complete relaxation to make the instrument speak, in complete contrast to the saxophone, where blowing harder — and thus tenser — is generally rewarded with more sound.) “It’s not like I picked it up and had a revelation,” Hutchings said. “Because, yeah, I really am a beginner of the shakuhachi.”
