London Jazz Award nominee Tim Hodgkinson: 'Real collaboration can only happen as a meeting between people, a meeting that involves friction and discovery and recognition, and so which you couldn't program in advance.'

Where does the creative process begin for you?

Where tactile, spatial, visual and auditory feelings connect somewhere inside, but triggered by and responding to the outside.

You have a rock background and are known for mixing genres, what do you think the secret is to successful musical experimentation?

To not worry about being experimental, whatever that means, but to be just trying to solve problems that it's become necessary to solve as you push your work forwards.

 When are you creatively at your happiest?

When I'm either at a point writing a piece where the piece starts to pull me along, or where the same thing happens playing an instrument. In both cases a lot of hard work has led up to a point where, if you get it right, things just happen. And then you get that sense of expansion...

 Given infinite resources, (and perhaps the gift of time-travel), who would be your ideal collaborators, and what instruments would each of you play?

Count Basie Orchestra on triangle? Real collaboration can only happen as a meeting between people, a meeting that involves friction and discovery and recognition, and so which you couldn't program in advance.