Next Gen Jazz Fest: Celebrating Emerging Voices in Jazz
Thursday, April 9 • 5-11 PM • Brooklyn Conservatory of Music (58 7th Ave, Brooklyn)
Curated by Ethan DiPietro
Co-presented by BKCM and the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University with support from the Jazz Generations Initiative, this gathering of professional musicians, students, and educators is dedicated to building community and supporting emerging voices in jazz through participatory workshops, interdisciplinary discussions, and exploratory performances. Sliding-scale tickets ($10-$40) are available at the link below. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
Schedule
5 pm: Ruby Laks Masterclass • Room 52 (Floor 5)
5 pm: Panel on Jam Session Culture led by Maurice Restrepo • Concert Hall (Floor 2)
6:30 pm: Gathering & Refreshments • Concert Hall (Floor 2)
7 pm: Ruby Laks Quartet • Concert Hall (Floor 2)
8 pm: Nathaniel Coben Group • Concert Hall (Floor 2)
9 pm: Jacob Smith Trio • Concert Hall (Floor 2)
10:30 pm: Emmanuel Michael (Solo) • Concert Hall (Floor 2)
Festival Artists
Ruby Laks (@rubylaks) is a multi-talented jazz singer and drummer carving out a distinct artistic path. Originally from Los Angeles, she attended LACHSA and later studied at Oberlin Conservatory under the mentorship of Billy Hart and La Tanya Hall. Her performance experience ranges from intimate jazz clubs to renowned venues such as Carnegie Hall, The Neuehouse Hollywood, and the Monterey Jazz Festival with the Women in Jazz Band. She has performed with artists such as Edmar Colon, Chico Pinheiro, Mark Mothersbaugh, and Gerald Cannon. Now based in New York City, she has cultivated a large online community of audiences and collaborators and is an endorsed artist with Ludwig Drums. Known for her vocal style and ability to accompany herself on drums, her performances draw deeply from the musical theatre repertoire that first sparked her passion for music.
Jacob Smith (@stomp.jw) is a nationally recognized jazz drummer from Massachusetts. A graduate of the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, he studied under Steve Rucker, John Yarling, and Chuck Bergeron. He is a two-time YoungArts winner and has performed at the Vail Jazz Festival and the Newport Jazz Festival. He has received honors from Jazz at Lincoln Center, UMass Jazz, and Berklee College of Music Now based in New York City, and deeply influenced by the hard bop tradition of Art Blakey, he leads his own groups and recently toured with Grammy-winning vocalist Samara Joy. He has also performed with Jazzmeia Horn, Curtis Lundy, William Hill III, and Cameron Campbell.
Nathaniel Coben (@neightc) is a Brooklyn-based bassist and bandleader. A graduate of Oberlin College where he worked with Gerald Cannon, he has toured with Brandon “Taz” Niederauer, and performed with artist such as Chico Pinheiro, Weedie Braimah, Tyreek McDole, and Harlem Farr. He produces and leads his own projects, drawing inspiration from neo-soul, R&B, gospel, and contemporary jazz, and is an accomplished composer He is a committed community educator, working with the Brooklyn nonprofit RiseBoro Community Partnership to teach accessible instrumental music, choir, and production classes for young students. Coben frequently hosts inclusive, cross-genre jam sessions that Artist Link bring together musicians across generations and scenes.
Emmanuel Michael (@dehmannuel), born and raised in South Dakota as a first-generation Ugandan and Southern Sudanese, is a New York City based artist who believes that without self-reflection and empathy towards himself and others, the foundation of what makes a truthful artist/human would crumble. A world-traveling guitarist/composer, Emmanuel has performed at the Village Vanguard as a member of groups led by Marcus Gilmore, Dayna Stephens, and Marquis Hill. Emmanuel is a recipient of the Jazz Gallery’s prestigious Residency Commission and recently released a guitar duo recording with Bill Frisell. They have also worked with artists including Terri Lyne Carrington, Ambrose Akinmusire, and Gerald Clayton.
Panel on Jam Session Culture
MODERATOR
Maurice Restrepo is a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology at the CUNY Graduate Center, whose research interests include jazz studies, gender and sexuality studies, critical studies in men and masculinities, and Afro-diasporic musical traditions from the Americas and the circum-Caribbean. A Graduate Fellow at the H. Wiley Hitchcock Institute for Studies in American Music, his work has received support from the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean among others. Before pursuing graduate studies, Maurice worked in development at prominent non-profit music organizations in New York City, including Jazz at Lincoln Center. His dissertation research explores contemporary constructions of masculinity in the NYC jazz scene. He will discuss his work and lead the festival’s panel on jam sessions.
PANELISTS
Nikita White began singing at a young age in her family’s Baptist Church on the Northwest side of Chicago. Inspired by her large musical family, she performed with local bands before she started attending jazz jam sessions and began working with tenor saxophone great Von Freeman. In 1980 she moved to New York where she studied voice with Dr. Barry Harris’ vocal workshop, recorded with George Braith, and worked with a variety of notable artists including Mulgrew Miller, Kenny Washington, Peter Washington, Henry Butler, Russell Hall and Lafayette Harris. She has toured in Europe and Africa, studied at Long Island University, and performed freelance for many years, including a turn as Ella Fitzgerald in Roz Nixon’s play SS Nirvana.
Dr. John Petrucelli is a composer, saxophonist, scholar, and educator based in New Jersey. He has held academic appointments at Oberlin Conservatory, The University of Utah, Northeastern State University, Carnegie Mellon University, Rutgers University–Newark, and Mason Gross School of the Arts. He earned his PhD in Music from the University of Pittsburgh. As a performer, he has appeared with artists including Geri Allen, Terence Blanchard, and The Temptations, and maintains an active national presence as a soloist and collaborator. He is the founder of Petrucelli, an artist-led musical instrument company producing a professional line of saxophones.
Faith Quashie intertwines her West Indian roots with the vibrant heartbeat of Brooklyn, NY, as contemporary vocalist and an artist who resonates far beyond soundwaves. She is the Recipient of two coveted DownBeat Magazine Awards and a seasoned traveler across stages. Collaborating with luminaries like Cyrille Aimee, Candice Hoyes, and Sasha Berliner through the Women in Jazz Organization, Faith is not just a vocalist, but a catalyst for change. She is a recent participant in The Woodshed Network Residency program alongside the legendary Dee Dee Bridgewater. Beyond the stage, Faith stands as a driving community force in the movement to elevate women in music.
About the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University
At the Center for Jazz Studies (CJS), jazz is a music without borders, providing innovative models for scholarship and teaching in the arts, humanities, and sciences. Scholars associated with the CJS continue to contribute to a field announced by founding Director, Robert G. O’Meally, in the title to the groundbreaking anthology he co-edited with Farah Jasmine Griffin and Brent Hayes Edwards, Uptown Conversations: The New Jazz Studies. The CJS continues to pursue the rich interdisciplinary “new jazz studies’” discussion initiated by Uptown Conversations, which transformed debates in and out of the academy, the nightclub, the concert hall, and the recording studio about the music, the musicians, and the larger cultural context in which they sounded out their ideas, passions, and aspirations.The CJS maintains its commitment to interdisciplinary musickings, listenings, and conversings. The CJS remains motivated by the idea that jazz is best heard by rallying a variety of disciplinary methodologies, perspectives, and concerns.
A guiding premise at the CJS is that the study of jazz presents more than a new animating paradigm for scholarly inquiry in the humanities and the arts, or in the social, political, and natural sciences. With improvisation at its aesthetic and performative heart, jazz provides students with models for dialoguing across difference that is alive to the moment yet shaped by creativity and empathy.
Since its founding in 1999, the Center for Jazz Studies has been an integral part of Columbia’s renowned Core Curriculum, introducing hundreds of undergraduate students to the interdisciplinary study of jazz each year. The CJS’s faculty offer a rich slate of courses from a number of departments across the university campus. The CJS is currently led by Director Dr. Tom Wetmore, who, this year, has focused on a “Jazz and Place” theme, taking seriously the specific sites and scenes where jazz performances happen, whether physical, social, or imagined.
BKCM is very grateful for the support and collaboration of CJS and Dr. Wetmore and looking forward to continued partnership. You can learn more about CJS and other events on their website.
About the Jazz Generations Initiative
The Jazz Generations Initiative unites artists and listeners with intergenerational performance opportunities and interdisciplinary jazz studies scholarship. The JGI will grow diverse audiences in New York and New Orleans, expand archival preservation of jazz legacies and spark new possibilities in improvised music and beyond.
BKCM is grateful for the support of the Jazz Generation Initiative. Learn more about JGI and its programming on their website.
Tickets
Tickets are available at the link below. To keep the festival accessible for everyone, tickets are available on a sliding-scale basis, with options ranging from $10-$40. Please pay what you are comfortable with – all tickets grant access to the entire festival from 5-11 pm, and all proceeds go directly to the artists. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.