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.
Category: Music
Caroline Shaw & Sō Percussion featuring Ringdown
For 20 years and counting, Sō Percussion has redefined chamber music for the 21st century through an “exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam” (New Yorker). For their ArtPower debut, they are joined by Ringdown, an “ecstatically blissful” (Night After Night) and “irresistible” (Feast of Music) cinematic electro-pop duo featuring composer-musicians Caroline Shaw and Danni Lee Parpan. They create music that floats up from the dusty record bin between Brahms and Brandi Carlile, and centers around joy, human connection, and trying to inspire people to feel more love.
Alfredo Rodríguez Quintet
GRAMMY–nominated Cuban pianist Alfredo Rodríguez returns to San Diego with the sound of Miami from his latest album: Coral Way. This album represents a significant chapter in his artistic journey, reflecting his current worldview as an artist. As Rodríguez himself states, “I play what I live, and Coral Way is my new life. It is the name of the street on which, for the past 3 years, I have been composing this album, and now I’m excited that people from all over the world will finally get to hear it in an expansive way, with a full live band.”
Born and raised in Havana, Cuba, globally acclaimed artist Alfredo, has not only captivated audiences worldwide with his exceptional mastery of diverse genres and disciplines, but his personal story adds an equally captivating dimension to his music. Since 2015, Alfredo has captivated audiences with sold-out performances at ArtPower. Now making his fourth appearance, he continues to be a highly anticipated and celebrated artist on our stage.
Anoushka Shankar
Anoushka Shankar brings to ArtPower a new band of musicians with whom she has carved out a new, multifaceted and dynamic sound as they perform music from her three newly-released mini-albums Chapter I: Forever, For Now, Chapter II: How Dark it Is Before Dawn, and marking the release of Chapter III (Untitled) coming in March 2025, alongside thoroughly shaken-up, reinterpreted gems from her previous releases including the Grammy-nominated live album Between Us…
Sara Schoenbeck and Wayne Horvitz
The Sara Schoenbeck and Wayne Horvitz duo navigate through original tunes and improvisatory soundscapes. With feet firmly planted in a genre-less zone, electronics and an ever-expanding textural palate serve to deepen the feel of a shared melodic language.
Sara Schoenbeck and Wayne Horvitz first met as improvising musicians at the 4 day, “company” style “Time Flies” festival (Vancouver B.C.) in 2000. In 2004 Horvitz formed the Gravitas Quartet with Schoenbeck, Ron Miles (Trumpet) and Peggy Lee (Cello). This quartet recorded two CDs and performed throughout Europe and North America. In 2015 Horvitz fused his ensemble Sweeter Than the Day with the Gravitas Quartet to create a septet performing compositions based on the poems of Richard Hugo. “Some Places Are Forever Afternoon” resulted in a CD, touring throughout the US, and an episode of NPR’s “Jazz Night in America”, hosted by Christian McBride. In addition, Schoenbeck and Horvitz had performed in numerous improvised collectives, special projects, and the occasional duo concert.
In 2018, the duo Schoenbeck/Horvitz was created, with subsequent concerts in NY, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, Ann Arbor, Sacramento, Northampton, Bellingham, Edmonton, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago, and Detroit. Their first CD, entitled Cell Walk, was released on the Songlines label in May 2020. Since the pandemic the duo has presented concerts in the United States, Canada, and Europe.
Sessa
Vinyl DJ set by B+
Sessa is a long-time fixture of both the American and Brazilian music scenes. Initially known for collaborating with NY guitar legend Yonatan Gat and co-founding the São Paulo psych-funk combo Garotas Suecas, Sessa released his debut album, Grandeza, in 2019. In their review of the album, the New Yorker described Sessa as “a songwriter cut from Veloso’s mold and blessed with a flair for the intimate, the enigmatic, and the licentious.”
Sessa’s songs are sung in Portuguese, with visceral, sensual lyrics, and melodic flourishes not unlike those of Tom Jobim. However, the music gets a deliberate minimalist treatment rarely found in contemporary Brazilian music, more reminiscent of the bareness of Leonard Cohen.
Sessa’s concerts are already stuff of legend, as he takes the stage accompanied solely by a female backing choir and Afro-Brazilian percussion. While the songs often deal with subjects such as the sensual body and spiritual transcendence, the music points to new, more subtle directions for Brazilian pop music – a deep, minimalist, almost insinuated use of the endlessly rich textures and rhythms that define the songwriting history of Brazil, which Sessa joins as one of its most promising new voices.
JACK Quartet + Art of Elan
Following a highly successful performance at the Birch Aquarium in May 2024, co-presented by Art of Elan and ArtPower, the internationally renowned JACK Quartet returns to San Diego with an exciting program that features the world premiere of a new work by UC San Diego (UCSD) faculty member and composer, Rand Steiger, as well as “Three Imaginary Chansons” by Juri Seo. This one-night-only special event will take place in the acoustically superb Conrad Prebys Concert Hall on campus at UCSD and will offer a chance to meet the composer and musicians immediately following the performance.
PROGRAM
Juri Seo: Three Imaginary Chansons
Rand Steiger: Tropes
Rand Steiger: Rage/Resolve
Fazerdaze
With opening acts:
Jackie Mendoza
DJ Alejandra Frank
The echo-bathed pop songs of Fazerdaze are the creation of New Zealand indie songwriter Amelia Murray. After building a following with short-form releases and international touring, the project’s daydreamy full-length debut, Morningside, appeared in 2017. Following a five-year gap between releases, the fuzz-injected, ’90s-inspired EP Break! saw release in 2022. (via AllMusic)
JW Francis + Jaguar Sun
Born in Oklahoma, raised in Paris, living in New York City, assistant to a Nobel Prize Winner, licensed New York City tour guide and Murder Mystery business owner, JW Francis is one of the newest signings to Sunday Best Recordings. His brand of lo-fi, utterly irresistible bedroom dream-pop takes its lead from the city JW lives in, with echoes of Jonathan Richman, The Velvet Underground and the lo-fi sound New York has been inspiring for decades.
Following a string of singles, New York’s very own JW Francis finally releases his sophomore album WANDERKID on Sunday Best Recordings. The LP is the follow up to his critically acclaimed debut We Share a Similar Joy, which saw JW firmly mark himself out as New York’s next lo-fi legend gaining mass support from BBC 6Music, Apple Music, Spotify, DIY, The Line of Best Fit, The Independent, HMV, Wonderland, and many others.
Jaguar Sun is a Canadian solo project created by multi instrumentalist Chris Minielly. Weaving together inspiration from bands such as Frightened Rabbit, Youth Lagoon, and Fruit Bats, Minielly creates dreamy, pop centric soundscapes with experimental and folky flair produced entirely in his home. The Ontario based artist allows his instruments to speak equally to his voice urging listeners to get lost in richly layered guitar lines and deep droning synths between soft vocal melodies.
Kassa Overall
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.
RIVA is a saxophonist and composer, known to juxtapose the jazz idiom with modern beat culture, techno, house, disco, through a fully improvisational danceable electronic jazz show.