Category: Jazz

In their almost two-decade history, the Grammy-nominated band Kneebody has created a genre
and style all its own. Their sound is explosive rock energy and high-level nuanced chamber
ensemble playing set within the frames of highly wrought compositions that are balanced with
adventurous no-holds-barred improvising.

Kneebody is keyboardist Adam Benjamin, trumpeter Shane Endsley, saxophonist Ben Wendel and drummer/bassist Nate Wood. The band has no leader or rather, each member is the leader; they’ve developed their own musical language, inventing a unique cueing system that allows
them each to change the tempo, key, style, and more in an instant.
The group met in their late teens while at The Eastman School of Music and Cal Arts, became
fast friends, and converged together as Kneebody amid the vibrant and eclectic music scene of
Los Angeles in 2001. Since then, each band member has amassed an impressive list of credits
and accomplishments over the years all while the band has continued to thrive and grow in
reputation, solidifying a fan base around the world.

In 2005, Kneebody released their debut self-titled album Kneebody on Dave Douglas’ Greenleaf
Music Label. Low Electrical Worker followed in 2007 on the Colortone Label. A collection of
13 original songs, Low Electrical Worker was hailed by saxophonist Joshua Redman as one of
his “favorite albums of 2007.”

In the spring of 2009, Kneebody and vocalist Theo Bleckmann released 12 Songs of Charles Ives
on the Winter & Winter label and received a GRAMMY nomination in the “classical crossover”
category. 2013 saw the release of The Line for Concord Records. In 2015, Kneebody’s
groundbreaking collaboration with electronic musician Daedelus on Kneedelus was released on
Flying Lotus’ imprint Brainfeeder records to praise from critics and audiences alike. In 2017,
Motéma Music released Kneebody’s Anti-Hero. 2019 brought back-to-back releases from
Kneebody on Edition Records. In the Spring, they released By Fire, an EP featuring an eclectic
selection of covers from John Legend to Soundgarden. Followed by the Fall release of Chapters,
the group’s first full-length album as a quartet, mixing deep grooves and deft melodies with a
wide range of guests including Becca Stevens, Gretchen Parlato, Michael Mayo, Gerald Clayton
and Josh Dion.

Nubya Garcia isn’t an artist you can easily classify. Is it jazz? Sure, the London-born saxophonist,
composer and bandleader grew up studying the genre under the noted pianist Nikki Yeoh at Camden
Music. But it isn’t until you listen to albums like 2020’s Source and 2024’s Odyssey that you hear
broader creativity shining through: It’s jazz, classical, dub, R&B and whatever else Garcia wants to
convey. It all comes from a place of exploration and self-study, of wanting to do all the things across all
disciplines while ignoring arbitrary boxes that don’t fit.

Garcia’s sophomore album Odyssey, out in September 2024 via Concord Jazz, is a majestic feat on
which she blends orchestral arrangements with R&B, jazz, broken beat and dub, resulting in a grand,
nuanced record that feels airy and celestial without sacrificing the groove. It’s a deeply personal
offering about her trek to falling back in love with musical composition over the past four years.

Chicago/Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, curator, activist, motivational speaker, and educator Isaiah Collier is a musical virtuoso in the truest sense of the phrase. Most known for his work as a saxophonist, Collier’s sound and approach is drawn from the influences of other master saxophonists such as John Coltrane, Roscoe Mitchell, Wayner Shorter, Ari Brown, and Gene Ammons. 

Opening by RIVA

Kassa Overall is a Grammy-nominated musician, emcee, singer, producer and drummer who melds avant-garde experimentation with hip-hop production techniques to tilt the nexus of jazz and rap in unmapped directions. He previously released four critically acclaimed projects: I THINK I’M GOOD, Go Get Ice Cream, Listen to Jazz, Shades of Flu and Shades of Flu 2. On ANIMALS, his Warp Records debut, Kassa pushes his kaleidoscopic, subversive vision further. He layers Roland 808s against avant-garde drumming in the vein of his mentors Elvin Jones and Billy Hart, the latter of whom he studied with at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Virtuoso musos appear alongside rap poets, including Danny Brown, Wiki, Lil B, and Shabazz Palaces. Top-flight jazz improvisation weaves in and out of orchestral string arrangements by Jherek Bischoff. The album’s diverse, all-star roster of collaborators includes several of his close friends, like vocalists Nick Hakim, Laura Mvula, Francis and the Lights, and jazz stars like Theo Croker and Vijay Iyer.

ANIMALS pushes Kassa’s message further too, the title a loaded metaphor for the paradoxes of his life as an entertainer and as a black man in America. ANIMALS is the sound of an artist aware of the cost of embodying one’s natural self in the public eye, a deep reckoning with the two-sided truth that to perform one’s freedom for an audience can mean succumbing to life inside a cage.

From his beginnings as one of Chicago’s most thrilling young trumpeters, to his current status as an internationally renowned musician, composer and bandleader, Marquis Hill has worked tirelessly to break down the barriers that divide musical genres. Contemporary and classic jazz, hip-hop, R&B, Chicago house, neo-soul—to Hill, they’re all essential elements of the profound African-American creative heritage he’s a part of. “It all comes from the same tree,” he says. “They simply blossomed from different branches.”

That mission to bring styles together, complemented by Hill’s absolute mastery of his instrument, is a through line connecting his many achievements. It can be heard on his latest album, Modern Flows Vol. II, with its seamless blend of jazz interplay, hip-hop-infused rhythms and socially conscious spoken-word. It’s integral to The Way We Play, his Concord Jazz debut from 2016, where Hill and his musicians reinvent jazz standards using their generation’s wide- ranging influences. It marks the four records Hill self-released before November of 2014, when he won the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz competition and became a presence on the global scene virtually overnight. And it defines the revelatory live dates by Hill’s longtime working group, the Blacktet, which the Chicago Tribune called “a remarkably polished, immensely attractive ensemble.”

Today, Hill maintains a nonstop touring schedule with the Blacktet, and the intensely interactive, utterly unique band has become a kind of graduate school for next-level talent—Hill included.“One of the most beautiful things about leading a group is the flow of knowledge and energy that we bounce off of one another,” he says. “Each member contributing their distinctive voice is what truly makes the music and magic happen.”

“Mark Guiliana, a technical master with a rare sense of musicality, has over the last decade become one of the most influential drummers of his generation.”— JazzTimes

Hailed by the New York Times as “a drummer around whom a cult of admiration has formed,” Mark Guiliana brings the same adventurous spirit, eclectic palette and gift for spontaneous invention to a staggering range of styles. Equally virtuosic playing acoustic jazz, boundary-stretching electronic music, or next-level rock, he’s become a key collaborator with such original sonic thinkers as Brad Mehldau, Meshell Ndegeocello, Donny McCaslin, Matisyahu, and the late, great David Bowie.