As the Trump administration continues to target institutional bastions of Black American Music, like the Smithsonian and the Kennedy Center, the month devoted to celebrating the music known as “jazz” feels in many ways more important than ever.
Though many shows in the Jazz Appreciation Month calendar focus on the more “traditional” end of the jazz spectrum, one of the first major highlights comes on April 6 when a group of artists representing the intersections of hip-hop, poetry, jazz and other fragments of the Black American Music tradition gather in Franklin Park for Jazz & Blossoms, an annual event presented by Words, Beats & Life that this year is anchored by hip-hop heavyweights Arrested Development and Kokayi.
Another highlight comes on April 12, when bass phenom Linda May Han Oh visits the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at UMD. Oh will present her newest work, The Glass Hours, a hypnotic suite for quintet that explores the fragility of life.
Those in the mood for the experimental can check out several top-tier shows at Rhizome DC throughout the month. First, on April 4, the mighty American-European creative trio Ballister brings joyful noise. Two days later, the celebrated downtown New York pianist and prolific composer Wayne Horvitz joins guitar warlock Anthony Pirog for a set of solo and duo performances. Then on April 15, the master oud player, former Baltimorean and adventurous improviser Huda Asfour will headline a three-act bill of solo improvisers.
On April 25, D.C.’s jazz church will call upon lyrical pianist Vince Evans to lead a hard-swinging quartet in a tribute program to Duke Ellington.
And in some exciting housekeeping news, look for forthcoming aesthetic changes to this column and our website as CapitalBop plans to launch a fully new look later this month.
For all other live jazz appreciation needs, consult the full D.C. jazz calendar.
NUBYA GARCIA
Tuesday April 1, 7:30 p.m.
The Birchmere (tickets)
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Saxophonist Nubya Garcia has been the talk of London’s jazz scene for over five years now. She emerged from a similar musical space as Shabaka Hutchings, Theon Cross, Yussef Dayes and other young cultural leaders of London. Garcia’s composition and performance brings together the palettes of the city’s electronic scenes with a simmering soul influence and a veneration of contemporary jazz – in clear coordination with modern Black American Music’s penchant for amalgam.
Her latest album, 2024’s Odyssey, is a swirl of neo noir moods and sounds emphasizing saxophone, drums, ambient synthesizers and Rhodes piano. She performs here at Alexandria’s Birchmere Music Hall to kick off of her first headlining U.S. tour.
SMITHSONIAN JAZZ MASTERWORKS ORCHESTRA: JAZZ AT THE COTTON CLUB
Sunday, April 6, 7 p.m.
Baird Auditorium – National Museum of Natural History (tickets)
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Jazz Appreciation Month was a creation of the Smithsonian and John Edward Hasse, so it is fitting that one of the premier staples of the JAM calendar is the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra’s annual celebration of Black American Music. The longstanding repertory ensemble was founded by an act of Congress in 1990, and frequently presents classic catalogs in jazz while also veering into examinations of larger social forces that drive the music. For years, the group has been led by veteran saxophonist, big band leader and educator Charlie Young III.
Here, the SJMO will visit the Natural History Museum’s Baird Auditorium to present a program of works celebrating Harlem’s Cotton Club, where Duke Ellington was long in residence.
ORRIN EVANS
Saturday April 12, 7 p.m.
Takoma Station (tickets)
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Orrin Evans has long been known as a monster pianist in his native Philadelphia and up and down the East Coast. He leads a variety of groups, including the Captain Black Big Band and smaller ensembles, and reached a new level of widespread recognition as the pianist in The Bad Plus from 2018 to 2021.
Evans’ touch on the piano is full of surprises; while he rarely swerves into full atonality, his brand of post-bop veers in and out of old-school, lush harmony and fiercely restless melodic development. The maestro will lead a trio at the historic Takoma Station Tavern.
MIHO HAZAMA AND M_UNIT
Sunday April 13, 8 p.m.
Strathmore Music Center (tickets)
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Japanese-born, New York-based composer and conductor Miho Hazama creates beautiful orchestral music that lives at the borderline between jazz and the Western art music canon. Hazama’s 2023 album Orbits features her orchestra m_unit performing cosmic-minded original compositions that straddle the worlds of Duke Ellington, Wayne Shorter and Gustav Holst.
She’s maintained a long relationship with the D.C. jazz scene, appearing as a composer-in-residence with the Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra and appearing with the Washington Women in Jazz Festival. She brings m_unit with her to Strathmore to celebrate the National Cherry Blossom Festival.
JASON MORAN AND FRIENDS
Thursday April 24, 8 p.m.
Kennedy Center – Eisenhower Theater (tickets)
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Jason Moran has guided the Kennedy Center’s jazz programming for the last decade, but more importantly he has helped to set directions in the music, writ large, throughout his 25-plus-year career as a bandleader. Moran’s solo piano works often have a pristine delicacy and beauty, as well as a strong sense of messy abstraction; his longtime trio, the Bandwagon, trades in sometimes-fearsome grooves. He has collaborated meaningfully with the old guard, like Sam Rivers and Archie Shepp, and has written operas, tributes to Thelonious Monk and James Reese Europe, and more. Moran’s work showcases true dedication to the craft, and an endless imagination.
Here he assembles a group of some of the music’s other great living visionaries for a one-night-only supergroup: trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, guitarist Mary Halvorson, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, flautist Nicole Mitchell, bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Terri Lynn Carrington.
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