Akenya Seymour is a singer, pianist, composer, and arranger, whose jazz sound incorporates elements of hip-hop, funk, pop, classical and world music. A proud Chicago native and New England Conservatory graduate, Akenya is an in-demand musician/bandleader in her hometown, having recorded with some of its leading hip-hop artists, including Chance the Rapper and Saba, while also serving as musical director for the great Noname. (The latter gig leading to her appearance on Mavis Staples' 2017 album, If All I Was Was Black, produced by Jeff Tweedy.) In the jazz world. Akenya has worked with the likes of Esperanza Spalding, Vijay Iyer, Jason Moran, Dave Holland and Makaya McCraven; she is also a central figure in Will Miller's RESAVOIR project. Akenya is currently working on her highly anticipated, debut LP, Moon in the 4th. Her newest single Decay is out now. Tonight Akenya will be joined by Evan Allen (piano), David Frazier Jr. (drums), Max Light (guitar) and Parker McAllister (bass).

Decay - Single

Akenya - "Decay"

RESAVOIR is a diverse collective of young Chicago artists & improvisers who perform songs written and directed by trumpeter Will Miller. Best-known for his work with the indie band Whitney — and for his brass cameos on tracks by Chance the Rapper, Lil Wayne, Mac Miller, Saba, Eryn Allen Kane, and more - Will is, at his core, a jazz cat who trained at the Oberlin Conservatory. All the while, the Chicago native has been slowly and privately developing the music he jokingly refers to as his “bedroom jazz” sound. RESAVOIR is the manifestation of this development, with Miller often harmonizing his trumpet through synths and samplers, giving his leads an expansive, orchestral sound which can recall Soulquarian Roy Hargrove or Jon Hassell. RESAVOIR's debut album is due in 2019, on International Anthem. Tonight, RESAVOIR will feature Miller (trumpet, MIDI keyboard), Akenya Seymour (keyboards, vocals), Irvin Pierce (tenor sax), Lane Beckstrom (bass), Peter Manheim (drums) and Jeremy Cunningham (drums).

RESAVOIR - "Escalator (Live at Co-Prosperity Sphere)"

Jeremy Cunningham is a drummer, composer, improviser and educator, who’s been an integral part of Chicago's improvisational music scene for nearly a decade. Cunningham's loose, zen drumming style has featured on recordings by the likes of trumpeter Marquis Hill and Nick Mazzarella's Meridian Trio, as well as with his own quartet, which also includes guitarist Jeff Parker, bassist Matt Ulery and alto saxophonist Josh Johnson. More recently, Cunningham has co-founded the Chicago Drum Choir with Mike Reed and Quin Kirchner. On this evening, Jeremy Cunningham will be previewing music from his upcoming album, The Weather Up There, which uses his personal, tragic experience of the loss of his brother to examine gun violence and the acute effect of that violence on other people's lives, applying the lens of memory, response, and collage to the music. Performing The Weather Up There alongside Cunningham will be Jeff Parker (guitar), Dustin Laurenzi (saxophone + electronics), Mike King (piano), Paul Bryan (bass), and special guests.

Jeremy Cunningham - "The Weather Up There"

Joshua Abrams is a veteran jazz bassist, experimentalist, improviser, and, since 2010, the bandleader of Natural Information Society, in which he plays the guimbri, a Gnawan string instrument which is at the heart of the group's hypnotic sound. Natural Information Society features a shifting line-up of musicians who use traditional and electric instruments to build intricate, long-form psychedelic environments, composed and improvised, connecting a wide range of contemporary musics and methodologies, including jazz, minimalism and krautrock. It is music that explores stasis, continuity, repetition and layering. Natural Information Society’s albums are critical favorites, with 2017’s Simultonality hailed by the likes of The Wire, Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone as one of the year’s best. On this evening, Natural Information Society will feature Abrams and Lisa Alvarado (harmonium), Mikel Patrick Avery and Chad Taylor (drums), Jason Stein (bass clarinet), Angelica Sanchez (piano).

Simultonality

Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society - "Maroon Dune"

Ben LaMar Gay is a cornetist, vocalist, composer, and producer from the Southside of Chicago who moves sound, color and space through folkloric filters, to produce strikingly original electro-acoustic pieces. Whether sounding like ambient jazz, sensually theoretical funk or pastoral verse laid out over beats, Ben's music never loses its humanity or its aspiration towards the sublime. He’s musically influenced by a collection of experiences in the Americas (North, Central and South); and his expansive, avant-garde idea of “Americana” is under the spell of a planet brought closer by technology. Ben's 2018 album release, Downtown Castles Can Never Block the Sun (a top five “Best Albums of 2018” selection by The WIRE) is actually a collection of music compiled from seven albums he made over the last seven years but never made the effort to release - and which are all now being reissued by International Anthem Recording Co. This evening Ben will perform alongside Will Faber (guitar), Matthew Davis (tuba), Tommaso Moretti (drums).

500 Chains

Ben LaMar Gay - "Lamps"

Mikel Patrick Avery is an interdisciplinary artist, composer, photographer and educator who's been an active part of Chicago’s music community for over a decade. Established as a jazz drummer, Mikel has been recognized for a melodic percussive style that often involves the use of unconventional “non-musical” objects. In recent years, Avery’s become a crucial part of various local ensembles, including Rob Mazurek’s Alternate Moon Cycles, Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society and Theaster Gates’s Black Monks of Mississippi. Mike Patrick Avery's PLAY is one of several projects he leads, and the most...playful. PLAY performances draw on the idea of a staged play (think props, objects, staging, dialogue), and engages techniques found in vaudeville and early Hollywood. PLAY also draws on the idea of child’s play, with Avery and his bandmates utilizing the stage as if it were a giant sandbox, moving from instrument to instrument in a seemingly free-willed manner, clouding the idea of what us planned and what is improvised. Tonight, PLAY will consist of Avery and Anthony Bruno (tenor saxophone), Ben LaMar Gay (cornet), John Sutton (bass).

PLAY

Mikel Patrick Avery - "...machine"

Angel Bat Dawid is a Black Earth Traditional composer, improviser, clarinetist, pianist, and vinyl addict. She is also a sonic archaeologist gathering and excavating soundz/music from space, the heavens, the ether and beyond. She restores peace, love and healing to the world, using the most powerful tool imaginable: omniversal sound. In 2017, Angel self-released the EP, The Joy of Living; and in 2018, she composed a “cosmic love opera” based on Song of Solomon that was performed at Co-Prosperity Sphere, an experimental arts and cultural center in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood that is home to International Anthem Recording Co, Lumpen Radio, Public Media Institute, and a handful of other grassroots organizations. This evening, the Brothahood will consist of Xris Espinoza (percussion, saxophone), Adam Zanolini (woodwinds, bass), Isaiah Collier (saxophones, percussion) and N.W. Long (electronics).

Angel Bat Dawid - "What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black Dr. Burroughs"

The JuJu Exchange has one foot in jazz, while the other one skips around — by design. The quartet is a musical partnership between trumpeter Nico Segal (aka Donnie Trumpet in his prior project, The Social Experiment, with Chance The Rapper), pianist Julian Reid, drummer Everett Reid and bassist Lane Beckstrom, all childhood friends who came up through Chicago Public School music programs together. The purpose of the JuJu Exchange is to build on past experiences in order to make a genre-bending style of music that looks to the future while dealing with the problems of the present. The group’s 2017 debut album, Exchange, drew on hip-hop, jazz, classical, pop and global music, to bring rhythmically savvy, improvisational sounds to people who may not know they like jazz. "Jazz is about that communication, that exchange between musicians and what everybody is hearing," Segal once said in a 2017 interview. Adding, "We aren't a traditional jazz band at all...we feed off of all types of music."

Jubilee - Single

The Juju Exchange - Jubilee

A mix that Todd Edwards made In November of 2009 for the monthly Treehouse party, which takes place at Littlefield in Brooklyn, NY - and which Todd plays on Wed. November 18th. It features classic Todd Edwards tracks, new productions and other tasty musical biscuits found in Todd's garage.



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