Whether treating patients as a psychiatrist or performing in a packed-out jazz club, Jeremy Sassoon’s perspective on the task at hand comes down to just one principle: connection.
The 59-year-old jazz singer and pianist is headed to Nightingale House, Clapham, south-west London, with his band, for a performance of his hit show Mojo, which stands for “Musicians of Jewish Origin”, on September 26.
Mojo tells the 100-year story of Jewish songwriters in 90 minutes. George Gershwin, Bob Dylan, Carol King, Paul Simon, Randy Newman, and Amy Winehouse are just a few of the stars presented by Sassoon.
“We cover about 40 songwriters; we play their music and tell some little-known facts. It’s a lot of fun and very interactive, I encourage people to sing along and they all know the tunes. It's basically playing everybody's record collection.”
Performing Mojo at the Edinburgh Fringe, 2021
Mojo has taken Sassoon on cruises around the world. On one occasion, he found himself on a trip from Namibia to Tenerife over Pesach. “I was upset to be missing Seder until I realised there was a Seder night on the cruise, and in my tender 50s, I had to sing for the first time my life Ma Nishtana.”
The skill of a great melody – whether it’s a Pesach tune or a Gershwin musical – runs in the Jewish tradition, Sassoon explains. From football chants to Christmas songs, "there was an art form to finding catchy melodies and this was something the Jewish songwriters did.
“There's a historical story that underpins why there are so many Jewish songwriters, and it's all to do with the Russian Empire changing the laws at the end of the 19th century and allowing Jews to go to music school... Suddenly everyone wanted their kids to go to the St Petersburg Conservatory.
“So, when the Russians came over [to America], music was one of the things they brought with them, and Yiddish theatre became the precursor for Broadway musicals.”
Although the great tradition of the Jewish songwriter still exists, the industry has diversified, and genres have expanded.
“The Jewish songwriters are just a part of the picture now, but in the previous century they dominated.”
Jeremy Sassoon's Ray Charles Project Big Band live at Cadogan Hall, London (Photo: YouTube)
Sassoon, who was born in Manchester, has been playing music for nearly as long as he can remember. He started at the Junior Royal Northern College of Music at the age of seven.
He would usually have to miss synagogue on Shabbat because he was at music college, but on the High Holy days, he would relish in the music of Sephardi culture - “the melodies still resonate with me.”
Attending services at Queens Road Synagogue (now Queenston Road) Synagogue in Didsbury until very recently, , Sassoon will go to shul to watch his father do the haftarah on Yom Kippur. Music clearly runs in the family and his dad entertains care home residents in Manchester every Monday with concerts.
Although Sassoon played music from a young age, at 18 years old, he recollects “rebelling against the expected music career and I went into medicine".
At medical school in London, he spent most of his time playing music at Middlesex Hospital. “There was a Christmas review that Middlesex did that went on for weeks in the West End, and I was a musical director on that for three years, which had its effects on my exams.”
Within a couple of years of qualifying, Sassoon specialised in psychiatry in Manchester.
Sassoon playing the trumpet as a doctor on a hospital ward in Australia 1990
But working life wasn’t like university, and Sassoon felt music pulling him out of the clinic.
“You only live once,” Sassoon reflects. “I was always fascinated by both medicine and music, and I tried to balance them. But I realised that wouldn’t satisfy me—I’m an all-or-nothing kind of person.”
After a stint as a doctor, Sassoon broke from tradition and made the move into music. He started performing every night in various bars and restaurants across Manchester.
Jeremy Sassoon (Photo: William Ellis, Sassoon website)
The transition from psychiatry to full-time performance wasn’t as drastic as one might think. “In my mind, they’re almost identical,” he explains. “Psychiatry and music are just two different ways of achieving the same goal.”
For Sassoon, music isn’t about self-expression, as it is for many musicians. “For me, it’s about connection. Whether I’m sitting with a patient in a psychiatric clinic or performing in front of an audience, the goal is the same: to connect and take them on a journey.
“You can elevate the mood of 200 people in a two-hour show—that’s the mark of a good musician. But doing that as a psychiatrist? That’s an even more remarkable achievement.”
And it’s not so unusual for doctors to also play music to a high level, says Sassoon.
“There are far more musicians in the medical fraternity than in any other profession. There is the World Doctors Orchestra, the European Doctors Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Doctors Symphony Orchestra.”
Sassoon presenting HRH the Duchess of Kent with flowers at the opening of the Royal Northern College of Music aged 8
Sassoon has performed in some of the most famous jazz venues in the UK, from Ronnie Scott’s to The Jazz Cafe in Camden.
A performance at Love Supreme Festival near Brighton in 2019 with his 11-piece bank next to Jamie Cullum and Lauryn Hill stands out as a favourite show, as does playing Ronnie Scott’s with his Ray Charles Project on the last weekend of the 2012 Olympics.
But it was a full month of Mojo at the Edinburgh fringe in 2022 that he enjoyed the most and now he is thrilled to be bringing it back to London.
To book tickets for the Jeremy Sassoon Jazz Evening September 26, click here
