She was awarded the M.B.E. (Member of the Order of the British Empire)
for her services to jazz music in the 1995 Queen's Birthday Honours
List.
Thompson had studied saxophone and classical composition at the Royal College Of Music, but through her love of the music of John Coltrane and Duke Ellington, she concentrated on jazz.
Thompson worked closely with Andrew Lloyd Webber on musicals such as Cats and Starlight Express, his Requiem, and Lloyd Webber's 1978 classical-fusion album Variations.
After she was hospitalised with atrial fibrillation, her attendance in an accident and emergency department was featured in an episode of the Channel 4 fly-on-the-wall television documentary 24 Hours in A&E in October 2020.