Butcher Brown
Miles Davis once quipped, “I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.” Butcher Brown has released forward-thinking and expansive hybrids of jazz and hip-hop since 2013. Today, they have an apt descriptor for their songs: solar music. Drawing inspiration from every sound under the sun, the Richmond, VA band adds elements of funk, soul, and rock to their foundational mix. The result is a Southern-leaning, sometimes psychedelic fusion that feels fresh yet familiar. Simultaneously working within and defying genre conventions, Butcher Brown is a jazz festival mainstay that could tour with Tyler, the Creator as easily as Khruangbin.
“We get daps from the jazz cats, the rap scene, the indie scene, and everyone else,” says drummer Corey Fonville. Every Butcher Brown album, show, and improvisational leap therein stems from the synergy, vision, and inexhaustible musical curiosity of him and his bandmates: producer/multi-instrumentalist DJ Harrison; bassist/composer Andrew Randazzo; trumpeter/saxophonist/MC Marcus “Tennishu” Tenney; and guitarist Morgan Burrs.
AJA MONET
Surrealist blues poet and community organizer aja monet has announced her debut album when the poems do what they do. As previewed by the recently released piece “the devil you know,” and the newly shared “castaway,” the album’s thematic origins center around Black resistance, love, and the inexhaustible quest for joy. She is joined on her journey by a potent roster of esteemed musicians, including Chief Xian aTunde AdjuahFKA Christian Scott (trumpet), Samora Pinderhughes (piano), Elena Pinderhughes (flute), Luques Curtis (bass), Weedie Braimah (percussion), and Marcus Gilmore (drums). Featuring additional vocals by bluesman Lonnie Holley, soul singer Eryn Allen Kane, DJ & host Novena Carmel and more. The songs throughout are insistent and unrelenting, with some reminiscent of jazz club virtuosity and melee while others act as a healing balm in gilead, moving like that of the call to intercessory prayer. The album is a potent demonstration of her indefatigable commitment to speak, her poems manifesting as a work of gravity that move constantly between origin and outcome, allowing them to exist in converse.
As a community organizer, poet, and teacher aja monet moves between mediums, each one an element to her writing. Organizing and activism manifest as part of a process toward liberation, with the poems, the music, and the art serving as the scribe of the time. Building off oratorical traditions, aja is the conduit for her predecessors to channel through. At any given time you’ll find the revolutionary spirit of Audre Lorde and the Last Poets, you’ll feel June Jordan, Amiri Baraka, Jayne Cortez and even the expressive ephemerality of a passing blue note. She has been a poet since youth, “I started writing when I was 8 or 9 — [but] I think I was a poet before I wrote my first poem.” She cut her teeth within the walls of the legendary Nuyorican Poets Café, where she won the title of Grand Slam Champion in 2007 at age 19, making her the youngest Grand Slam Champion in the venue’s history. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and living briefly in Paris, aja co-edited Chorus: A Literary Mixtape alongside poet-actor-director Saul Williams and published her first full length book of poetry called My Mother was A Freedom Fighter with Haymarket Books.
On when the poems do what they do aja monet appears as a woman of letters and storm, her poems do not roar in pentameter – but rather in storm surge because, “Who’s got time for poems when the world is on fire?!.” aja monet is a griot, a storyteller, a chronicler, and your grandmother telling you about her first love all at once. These aren’t poems for poets, but poems for everyone. When you reach the end of this album, you are left with a similar feeling you get when heartbroken, the gravity of barrelling back down to earth, sopping wet with tears, out of breath, overcome with love, despair, hope, and all too aware that all of this, is over far too soon. When the poems do what they do, they do absolutely everything.
KAOS THEORY BOOK SIGNING & DISCUSSION
KAOS Theory: The Afrokosmic Ark of Ben Caldwell tells the story of filmmaker, educator and community activist Ben Caldwell and KAOS Network, the media-arts center he founded in Los Angeles’s Leimert Park neighborhood.
THEON CROSS & JAMAEL DEAN
TICKETS GO ON SALE FRIDAY AUGUST 11TH!
Theon Cross is one of those rare musicians whose vision has redefined their instrument. His unique approach to the tuba has expanded the instrument’s sonic possibilities in revolutionary fashion, restoring it to a long-forgotten prominence as a crucial part of the contemporary jazz ensemble. Through his combination of technical mastery, studio smarts, deep musical knowledge and expansive vision, the power and originality of Theon’s playing has reinvented the tuba’s place in modern music.
His most recent album, Intra-I (meaning ‘Within Self’) released in 2021 synthesizes the diversity of his musical art and experience to deliver an essential message to a world gripped by tribulation. Across ten sonically divergent and bass-rich tracks, Intra-I explores themes of self-reliance, origins, identity and more. Since its release he has contributed a version of Monk’s Epistrophy for Blue Note Re:Imagined II, been a core part of Miles Davis channeling collective London Brew and featured on Matthew Herbert’s single The Horse Has A Voice. He has also released his first 7” single Wings b/w a version of Aswad’s Back to Africa.
He completed his first tour of North America in October 2022 with a combination of headline shows and supports for Makaya McCraven. This year will see him play multiple live dates in solo, duo and band configurations across the UK, Europe, North and South America.
Pianist and producer Jamael Dean is a harmonically sophisticated pianist with a bent toward expansive, boundary-pushing jazz and hip-hop. A gifted player since his teens, he emerged in the 2010s in Los Angeles, playing with Kamasi Washington, Thundercat, and his grandfather, drummer Donald Dean, before issuing his 2019 Stones Throw debut, Black Space Tapes.
Born in 1998 in Bakersfield, California, Dean was introduced to music at a young age and initially started out on violin while in the third grade. At age nine, he was given a keyboard and soon began teaching himself how to play by ear. Under the guidance of Les McCann and Yusef Lateef drummer Donald Dean, he became interested in jazz and spent much of his adolescence mentoring and playing gigs with the elder Dean. His talent also caught the attention of players on the greater Los Angeles jazz scene, including saxophonist Kamasi Washington and bassist/singer Thundercat; both of whom took him on tour while he was still in high school. He began expanding his interests, crafting electronic beats on his computer and merging jazz, funk, and hip-hop. Following high school, he enrolled as a Jazz Performance major at the New School in New York City. In 2019, he released his debut album, the genre-bending Black Space Tapes on Stones Throw.
SoHo House: Brian Jackson & Adrian Younge
Excited to be coming back to the great city of #Chicago, with Brian Jacksonand Adrian Younge in partnership with our friends at Stone Island, Victory Journal & Soho House Chicago.
If you're a #SoHoHouse member, be sure to arrive early for the discussion between #AdrianYounge & #BrianJackson. Following the discussion Brian & his trio will be performing for an intimate audience followed by an Adrian Younge DJ set.
This an invite only event and tickets are extremely limited. Hope to see you there!
Jazz Is Dead Summit: São Paulo
On September 24, 2023, Jazz Is Dead celebrates the countless pioneers of the culture with live discussions, Djs, art and more. Special guests will help us understand the trans-national connections between samba, jazz, funk and hip hop.
EMICIDA
“When the black Brazilian rapper Emicida imagines his country’s whitewashed history, he sees a textbook missing a succession of key pages.
In his songs and on stage, the São Paulo-born musician tries to correct that skewed telling, remembering the lives and times of black Brazilian academics, artists and activists in the hope of changing Brazil’s future.
“If we’d been told about this story and these [black] contributions at school, we’d have a radically different sense of who we are – and this would have produced a far better society than the one we’ve got today,” the 35-year-old artist said, quoting the famous saying that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Emicida, real name Leandro Roque de Oliveira, has been making music for more than a decade, recording three albums and building a reputation as one of Brazil’s top hip-hop MCs. In the past 12 months he has also emerged as one of the country’s most influential cultural figures.” - The Guardian
RONNIE FOSTER
Foster first caught the Foster first caught the ear of Blue Note co-founder Francis Wolff in 1970 when he made his first-ever recording as a sideman on jazz guitar legend Grant Green’s searingly funky Blue Note LP, Alive!. A few months later, Ronnie was officially signed to the prestigious label making him the next in an illustrious lineage of Hammond B3 organ artisans the label had presented which included the legendary Jimmy Smith, Larry Young, and Dr. Lonnie Smith. His music has been sampled by hip hop artists such as A Tribe Called Quest, Kendrick Lamar, Madlib, J.Cole and more.
Arthur Verocai US Tour
In August 2023, ArtDontSleep presents Jazz Está Morto celebrates the genius of Arthur Verocai with a 30 piece orchestra and Special Guests bringing to life his self titled, 1972, debut album on Verocai’s first ever US Tour. This album has been sampled by MF Doom, Ludacris & Common, Little Brother, Action Bronson, Curren$y and countless others and is a staple amongst hip hop producers from every era. "I could listen to the album everyday for the rest of my life" - Madlib. This will be a once in a life time moment with one of the greatest Brazilian Arranger/Composers to ever walk the face of the earth. "A true master conductor. Just as incredible live as recorded" - MF DOOM
Garrett Saracho
This Summer, Jazz Is Dead and Grand Performances present Los Angeles' unsung Chicano Jazz Legend, Garrett Saracho, in celebration of the 50 year anniversary of his 1973 masterpiece, En Medio, This will be the first time this album has ever been performed live in its entirety, one night only at Grand Performances.
ISAIAH COLLIER & THE CHOSEN FEW
Twenty-three-year-old Isaiah Collier is a musical virtuoso in the truest sense of the phrase. He began playing saxophone at age 11, and his intuitive proficiency earned him attention early on. Ever since, his band Isaiah Collier and The Chosen Few has been turning ears.
Dante Ross "Son of the City"
Dante Ross will be with us at The Artform Studio on June 22nd sharing his new book Son of the City!
Son of the City goes behind the scenes of the Golden Age of Hip Hop with esteemed producer and music industry veteran, Dante Ross, one of the top-25 greatest A&Rs as named by Complex Magazine. Ross pulls no punches as he details his time growing up on the pre-gentrification Lower East Side as the child of political activists, his devotion to punk rock, and his eventual discovery of a brand new art form, which landed him at Tommy Boy Records, where he signed and handled the careers of such artists as De La Soul, Queen Latifah, and Digital Underground. Ross would go on on to work for Elektra records, where he signed Brand Nubian, Grand Puba, Pete Rock & C.L Smooth, KMD, Busta Rhymes, and Ol' Dirty Bastard. He is currently a SVP of A&R at Warner Music Group where he recently helped unearth Macklemore to the world.
As a producer, Ross has produced records for artists such as 3rd Bass, Del Tha Funky Homosapien, Run-DMC, Santana, Everlast (working on both the multi-platinum album Whitey Ford Sings The Blues and the gold follow-up, Eat At Whitey's), plus many others. Ross earned a Grammy in 1998 for his production work on Carlos Santana's Supernatural. Ross' production work has also appeared on Eminem's 8 Mile soundtrack, where he produced and co-wrote two songs that featured Macy Grey and Young Z. Ross has worked with artists as diverse as Korn, Incubus, Mobb Deep, Ice Cube, ODB, as well as a plethora of others.
JAZZ ESTÁ MORTO: JOYCE & TUTTY MORENO
Joyce Moreno is like the Joni Mitchell of Brazil, a singular, multi-talented paragon of feminine musical energy. Unapologetically independent, Joyce is a masterful guitar player, angelic vocalist and inspired composer who’s blazed her own musical trail since her start in the music business in the sixties as an outspoken singer-songwriter. Since her rediscovery by Gilles Peterson and other British DJs in the nineties, her reputation as a performer and recording artist has only grown. Despite her singular talents, she’s always surrounded herself with talented musical partners such as Vinicius de Moraes, (ex-husband) Nelson Angelo, Naná Vasconcelos, Claus Ogerman, her forever musical and life partner Tutty Moreno and, of course, João Donato.
Don’t ask for footnotes, but Brazil has more phenomenal drummers per-capita than any other country in the world, and Tutty Moreno is at the top of the list of best drummers that country has to offer. Unlike the above two cariocas (Rio natives), Tutty Moreno is from Salvador, Bahia where most of Africa’s involuntary immigrants first landed during Brazil’s slave trade. Exposed from an early age to the rhythms of mother Africa, Tutty absorbed the fluid and sacred rhythms and has been translating them into the modern idiom of Brazilian pop music for over five decades being the go-to drummer for Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Jards Macalé, Maria Bethania and his wife since the late seventies, Joyce Moreno.
HERMETO PASCOAL US TOUR 2023
Few musicians have ever reach the stature of Hermeto Pascoal. A true maestro and a cultural icon, he represents the highest level of musical evolution; as a multi-instrumentalist, as a composer and as an arranger.
Hermeto is a Brazilian legend. He has worked with the greatest of the greats, such as: Milton Nascimento, Tim Maia, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and countless others. He first gained public attention in 1971 after performing and recording with Miles Davis on the Live/Evil album, of which Miles said, “Hermeto is one of the most important musicians on the planet.” There is good reason (beyond his Gandalf-like appearance) why he is known as "O Bruxo" (the Wizard). Long before Miles, he was performing and collabing with the likes of Edu Lobo and Elis Regina. Later collaborations involved fellow Brazilian musicians Airto Moreira and Flora Purim. From the late 1970s onward, he has mostly led his own groups, playing at many prestigious venues, such as the Montruex Jazz Festival in 1979.
Pascoal often makes music with unconventional objects such as teapots, children's toys, and animals, as well as keyboards, button accordions, melodica, saxophones, guitars, flutes, voices, various brass and folkloric instruments. He uses nature as a basis for his compositions, as in his Música da Lagoa, in which the musicians burble water and play flutes while immersed in a lagoon: a Brazilian television broadcast from 1999 showed him soloing at one point by singing into a cup with his mouth partially submerged in water. Folk music from rural Brazil is another important influence in his work.
JAZZ IS DEAD: JIMETTA ROSE & VOICES OF CREATION & LADY BLACKBIRD
JIMETTA ROSE AND THE VOICES OF CREATION
The Voices of Creation are a community-based choir led by vocalist, songwriter, arranger, producer and main stay of the Los Angeles scene, Jimetta Rose. Made up of a multi-generational group of mainly non-professional singers backed by some of the city’s finest musicians, their music marries hip strains of gospel with layers of jazz, soul and funk. While aspects of their music might recall Kamasi Washington, The Staple Singers or Sly Stone, Jimetta’s unique vision has resulted in new spiritually-charged form of music whose whole-hearted embrace of love, joy and peace act as sonic healing balms for the soul.
LADY BLACKBIRD
Lady Blackbird didn’t mean to soundtrack a revolution. But that’s exactly what she did. On May 27th, 2020 the Los Angeles-based singer Marley Munroe released her debut single.
“It’s a brave soul indeed who not only tackles one of Nina Simone’s starkest tunes, ‘Blackbird’, but also calls herself Lady Blackbird into the bargain,” noted Blues and Soul at the time. “The original is a stripped-down chant with claps and hand drums, a field hollering protest song that will darken the skies of anyone’s heart. Lady Blackbird has the same urgent grace as Simone and she really takes what is an essentially acapella song and adds her own powerful magic and spirit to proceedings… there’s an unmatched regality throughout, proving Lady Blackbird is an incisive and adroit singer. She channels the agony and thick despair on the lyrics, too.”
Simone released ‘Blackbird’ in 1963, at the height of the civil rights struggle. Almost six decades later, the killing of George Floyd, two days before the release of Lady Blackbird’s version, gave this new rendition a coincidental but no less stark, awful yet uplifting power.
“There was so much emotion there,” Lady Blackbird reflects now of a recording she and her Grammy-nominated producer Chris Seefried had laid down in the legendary Studio III (aka Prince’s room) in LA’s Sunset Sound. Jazz, she agrees, has protest in its DNA.
Lady Blackbird isn’t the Nina Simone of the Black Lives Matter era (she certainly wouldn’t call herself that). But she is the talent, and the force-of-nature, and the talk-walking personality, that Gilles Peterson has dubbed “the Grace Jones of jazz” – an accolade reinforced by the remixes of recent single ‘Collage’ by jazz and house heavyweights Bruise, Greg Foat and KDA.
And she’s the woman who can flex in other areas, too, as seen in the jaw-dropping version of Tom Petty’s ‘Angel Dream’ that she performed at the virtual birthday bash held last October in tribute to what would have been the late musician’s 70th birthday.
A transcendent performer of songs old and new, an artist who's approach, outlook and vibe is summed up in the title of her stunning forthcoming debut album: Black Acid Soul.
JAZZ IS DEAD: HOTEL SAN CLAUDIO
Revered composer, pianist, DJ and two decade-long bridge between jazz, dance and hip-hop, Mark de Clive-Lowe (MdCL), links up with Brooklyn-based, Haitian-rooted, jazz vocalist and artist Melanie Charles and Detroit drummer/producer/DJ, Shigeto on Hotel San Claudio, a collaborative LP of spiritual jazz, live deconstructed beats, including a three-track set of Pharoah Sanders reinterpretations.
JAZZ IS DEAD: EZRA COLLECTIVE
Ezra Collective’s new era, a venture in discovered maturity and raised stakes, will be defined by the anticipated second album. Where I’m Meant To Be is a thumping celebration of life, an affirming elevation in the Ezra Collective’s winding hybrid sound and refined collective character.
JAZZ IS DEAD: ADI OASIS
The French-Caribbean singer-producer (now based in Brooklyn) recently announced her new full-length album, Lotus Glow, to be released March 3. Her first album as Adi Oasis, the album features an eclectic range of guests, including KIRBY, Leven Kali, Jamila Woods and Aaron Taylor.
On Lotus Glow, the French Caribbean, Brooklyn based soul-funk-r&b artist combines her masterful production, soaring vocal chops and spectacular bass prowess to create her most personal work to date – and also her most political. For Adi, the political themes are unavoidable. “Thematically my new album is fearless, yet vulnerable, and also more political, because I’m a black female immigrant, and these are my truths.”
The album title, Lotus Glow, sums up Adi’s journey, while being a manifestation of her future dreams. “Out of the mud grows the lotus,” Adi explains, referring to the many struggles she has overcome in her life, from growing up in the Parisian projects to being a Black woman in America. “Lotus Glow represents the flower I’ve blossomed into, the artist I’ve worked on becoming all my life. The glow is where I am going next. It’s my destiny.”
Since going solo in 2018, Adi has earned widespread critical acclaim and a thriving fanbase, partly due to her incredible live shows. Her single “Whisper My Name” was featured in a stunning COLORS debut in early 2021, and she has garnered critical praise from press including Vogue to Rolling Stone, Wonderland, Line of Best Fit, Afropunk and many others.
She has toured globally, appearing with such artists as Anderson .Paak, Gregory Porter, JUNGLE, Keyshia Cole, Lee Fields, Big Freeda and more, and has performed at Central Park Summerstage, Afropunk, Funk on the Rocks (Red Rocks) and London Jazz Fest.
“It’s easy to get lost in Adi Oasis’ free-flowing melodies and groovy tones, something that is always a blessing and never a curse. Her honeyed vocals sweep you into a sepia-toned daze and everything feels just perfect.” – Earmilk “Stages” sees Adi Oasis adopting groovy melodies against assertive vocals. Flirting with a blend of jazz, soul, and R&B, the pair deliver a smooth flow that perfectly complements the track.” – Line of Best Fit
“Littered with retro sensibilities that are most noticeable in its serene production, “Stages” is the ultimate Sunday sound… Warm-toned and undeniably infectious.” – Wonderland
“Adi Oasis seems destined to be one of the post-COVID era’s genuine rising stars.” – Blackbook
“a sundry mix of exuberant soul-pop tracks” – VOGUE
“Adi Oasis returns with a groovy new single,‘Stages’… a feel-good track channels classic ’70s soul with a blend of jazz and R&B.” – NME
In store discussion with Henry Franklin, garrett saracho & katalyst
We are excited to be hosting Henry “The Skipper” Franklin, Garrett Saracho and Katalyst for an in store discussion about ‘70s Jazz in Los Angeles!
