Jazz and Sonic Arts Concert: Sonic Visionaries

Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace by multi-instrumentalist Shabaka Hutchings is, in a sense, a debut album. And yet, the album also serves as a reintroduction to the artist, a levitating, stunning work chock full of the lessons he’s learned over the course of his life and career. And perhaps, most importantly, it represents the spirit of exploration that the artist is most tapped into these days.

London-born, Hutchings spent much of his childhood in Barbados. Beginning at age nine, he studied the clarinet, playing in calypso bands while studying classical repertoire, often practicing over hip hop beats by artists such as Nas, as well as to the music native to Barbados. He imparted that at the time, “The idea of being a particular ‘type’ of musician who limited themselves by genre was totally alien to me and my peers, it was just about playing with skill and dedication, and whether music moved me or left me cold.”

Consequently, after studying clarinet at Guildhall School of Music from 2004-2008, he collaborated on a kaleidoscopic range of projects: recording and/or touring with Mulatu Astatke and the Heliocentrics, Soweto Kinch, Floating Points and Courtney Pine amongst many other bands, as well as being a part of the London Improvisers Orchestra. He’s also composed pieces for the BBC Concert Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Ligeti Quartet, and performed the Copland Clarinet Concerto with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Britten Sinfonietta as well as the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra.

Over the course of the past decade, the lion’s share of his touring and recorded work has been with three bands: Sons of Kemet, The Comet is Coming and Shabaka and the Ancestors. “In these formations,” he shared, “I’ve been able to display a fundamental approach to creative practice in different contexts spanning Afro-Caribbean fusion, London dance music club culture and the rich South African jazz tradition – all within the freedom afforded by the legacy of the American ‘jazz’ tradition.” That approach reflects a mantra he absorbed early in his life.

“My primary school teacher told me ‘the music isn’t hard, just practice it mechanically then relax and let your soul shine through’. This is an adage which I’ve kept throughout my life of learning how the musics and instruments of different cultures relate to my personal vision of sound.”

His musical exploration includes employing a variety of flutes, including the ancient Japanese Shakuhachi, which he started playing in 2020 during the pandemic. “Since then, it has slowly changed the scope of my musical inner landscape and drawn me towards a multitude of other instruments in the flute family,” he explained. “As more flutes have been added to my arsenal including Mayan Teotihuacan drone flutes, Brazilian Pifanos, Native American flutes and South American Quenas, I’ve started to appreciate the underlying principles that cause these instruments to resonate most fully and use this understanding to form a concept allowing me to freely move between instruments.”

On New Year’s Day 2023, in the wake of the release of his 2022 debut EP, Afrikan Culture (which notably featured the artist primarily on flutes), Shabaka announced that beginning in 2024 he’d take a hiatus from playing the saxophone publicly. He clarified in July 2023 on his Instagram page his intention to cease playing with bands in which the saxophone was his primary instrument (including The Comet Is Coming, Sons of Kemet and Shabaka and the Ancestors).

For the flute-forward album Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace, Hutchings tapped into a remarkable cadre of players, including percussionist Carlos Niño and bassist Esperanza Spalding. Vocalists including Saul Williams and Lianne La Havas contributed to “Managing My Breath, What Fear Had Become” and “Kiss Me Before I Forget”, respectively. Floating Points, with whom Shabaka shared a stage with for their performance of Promises at the Hollywood Bowl, provided additional production on the track “I’ll Do Whatever You Want”.

“I invited a bunch of musicians I’ve met and admired over the past few years of touring throughout the United States to collaborate and everyone said yes, which I constantly find breathtaking,” he disclosed. His aim was to gather the musicians at Rudy Van Gelder’s historic studios, which he says “informed the sound of so many seminal jazz albums that have shaped my musical aptitude. We played with no headphones or separation in the room so we could capture the atmosphere of simply playing together in the space without a technological intermediary. After recording hours of inspired interactions, I set to work producing an album from the material.”

When asked about the meaning of the song’s titles, he explained that his previous album’s song titles can be read as poems, respectively. “The narrative aspect of my albums is always intentional,” he explained. “Around the release of the Shabaka and the Ancestors album We Are Sent Here by History, I coined the term ‘sonic poems’ to express how I’m intending the listener to relate to the words associated with the sounds contained on the disc. Each title on this disc was extracted from a longer poem written specifically for the album which only achieved its full meaning in the presence of the music.”

He further relayed that “How the listener interprets the words in relation to the sounds is personal and it’s this subjective unravelling of complex ideas that’s an integral part of the journey I intend to take the listener on. This idea permeated sons of Sons of Kemet’s Black to the Future album whereby each track title reads as a poem. Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace follows in this tradition of titles as symbolising a narrative which is necessarily subjective and expansive in relation to the listener’s experience with the heard music.” –Ayana Contreras
 

Tamil Nadu-raised and New York-born critically acclaimed vocalist Ganavya lives, learns, and loves fluidly from the nexus of many frameworks and understandings. Hers is a deeply profound and rooted voice.  A multidisciplinary creator, she is a soundsmith and wordsmith. Trained as an improviser, scholar, dancer, and multi-instrumentalist, she maintains an inner library of “spi/ritual” blueprints offered to her by an intergenerational constellation of collaborators, continuously anchoring her practice in pasts, presents and, futures. Much of her childhood was on the pilgrimage trail, learning the storytelling art form of harikathā and singing poetry that critiques hierarchal social structures. She is a co-founder of the non-hierarchical We Have Voice Collective. 

Equally at home in an orchestra or in a jazz club, Boston-based harpist Charles Overton aims to create a musical environment that is accessible, exciting, and resonates deeply with audiences. Overton performs frequently with the Boston Symphony as both a second and substitute harpist, this past season joining them on a week-long tour to Japan. Highlights in chamber music include three summers performing at the Yellow Barn Summer Music Festival, as well as concerts with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Castle of Our Skins, the Walden Chamber Players, and the Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia. He has performed as a soloist with New England ensembles including the Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra, Boston Civic Symphony and Boston Landmarks Orchestra. Also an avid jazz musician, he appears regularly in clubs all over the northeast, including Jimmy’s, Scullers, the Regattabar, and Le Poisson Rouge, as both leader and sideman. 

Originally from Richmond, VA, he began his musical journey with formative experiences with the American Youth Harp Ensemble and the Interlochen Arts Academy before moving to Boston in 2012 to expand his musical horizons at the Berklee College of Music. During his studies he attended orchestra festivals like the Pacific Music Festival and the Tanglewood Music Center, and also became immersed in the world of jazz and improvised music, owing much of his outlook on music to lessons from the renowned artist-faculty of the Berklee Global Jazz Institute. 
Overton currently serves on the faculty of the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and is actively writing and arranging new music for upcoming projects. 
 

Artistic Director of the Australian Art Orchestra, Aaron Choulai is an award winning and critically acclaimed pianist and composer whose work is recognised as innovating new directions in jazz, hip-hop and improvised music. From large scale multi media cross-cultural festival commissions. to Japanese hip-hop beat tapes, Choulai’s career spans over 20 years, crossing international borders and intersections between genre and culture. 

Born in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, and having lived in Tokyo for 15 years, Aaron Choulai is an artist of diverse culture and musical expression. Choulai began his career in Melbourne as a pianist before signing with the American record label Sunnyside records and moving to New York in the early 2000’s. While working during this time as a bandleader and sideman in America and Europe, Choulai’s profile as a composer and arranger grew while participating in projects such as The Black Arm Band (arr: 2007) We Don’t Dance For No Reason (comp: 2008) and Kate Ceberano (md: 2004 -2007) back in Australia. In 2008 he undertook postgraduate studies at theTokyo University of the Arts and after graduating in 2013, continued living in Tokyo where he has become a prominent figure in music in Japan. 

Aaron Choulai was awarded the Freedman Fellowship in Jazz (2014), the MEXT scholarship (2008) and was included in ‘The 100 most influential people in Melbourne’ by People Magazine (2005). He has collaborated with various artists including Archie Roach, Ruby Hunter, Ben Monder, Jim Black, Daichi Yamamoto, Slack, Alan Browne, Paul Grabowsky, Joel Frahm, Yoshimoto Akihiro and more. 

Music is definitely part of Darrell Green’s family pedigree — his father was a bass player after all — but this jazz drummer also has his own preternatural sense of groove. Over a career that’s spanned more than two decades, Green has become a master technician and prolific sideman, sharing stages with everyone from Blue Note vibraphonist Stefon Harris to saxophonist Red Holloway. Though jazz is his primary focus, Green is conversant in every genre from straight-ahead jazz to Latin and West African music.

Oakland-raised Green has been playing drums for as long as he can remember. In fact, his first birthday present was a toy drum. When he was 7 years old, Green landed his first professional gig at Cosmopolitan Baptist Church. Four years later he matriculated in the Young Musicians Program at UC Berkeley and apprenticed under Kent Reed. “He would take me to his gigs. I would help him set up so I got exposed to the real life of a musician,” says Green. During high school Green was a section leader in both the Young People’s Symphony Orchestra and the Bay Area Wind Symphony. Additionally, he played drums in the Castlemont High School Jazz Band and backed the Castleers choir. After high school, Green attended the California Institute of the Arts on a scholarship, where he majored in jazz studies with an emphasis on African percussion.bio

Throughout college Green drove up to the Bay Area every weekend to play a trio gig at San Francisco’s Club Deluxe, which featured Marcus Shelby on bass and Howard Wiley on saxophone. In 2001 he began touring with Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, and also formed a trio with guitarist Julian Lage and bassist David Ewell. Two years later, Green joined the Dave Ellis Quintet and performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival. He consolidated his career as a gun-for-hire, and started getting calls from heavyweights like Harris and Dr. Lonnie Smith whenever they came to town. He developed a style that’s rooted in modern post-bop, but retains elements of his gospel and classical lineage. As a soloist, Green became known for his bedrock groove and inexhaustible creativity.

In 2005 Green landed a scholarship at the Manhattan School of Music, where he began a comprehensive study of jazz performance. Shortly thereafter he began working with David Weiss, saxophonists JD Allen and Sherman Irby, and the Myron Waldon/Daron Barrett Quartet. He became a sought-after musician for both session work and live shows.

Green has toured with James Hurt, James Zollar, Brad Leali, Jesse Davis, and Stacy Dillard. Currently, he is touring with Pharoah Sanders, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Sherman Irby, Steve Turre, Faye Carol, Lavay Smith and the Red Hot Skillet Lickers, and Jeremy Pelt. He is one of the most in-demand drummers in New York , Europe, and Japan.

Jodi Proznick, a distinguished Canadian jazz bassist, composer, and educator, was honoured as the 2019 Jazz Artist of the Year at the Western Canadian Music Awards, boasting three Juno Award nominations. Recognized for her impactful contributions to music education, she received the 2022 Lieutenant Governor's Arts and Music Award in British Columbia. Proznick has collaborated with jazz luminaries like David “Fathead” Newman, Ed Thigpen, Sheila Jordan and Peter Bernstein, and has performed as a jazz soloist with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Currently serving as Jazz Department Chair at the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra School of Music and with a history at esteemed institutions like Banff Center for the Arts and Creativity, Capilano University, and Kwantlen Polytechnic University, she remains a influential force in shaping the future of jazz. In 2022, she co-founded the Ostara Project, earning a Juno nomination for their impactful debut album.