Friday Line Up
Stokley
Stokley is a GRAMMY-nominated vocalist, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist who is one of music’s best-kept secrets. He has worked with some of the biggest names in music including Prince, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson and more. He’s known best as the lead singer and drummer for legendary R&B group Mint Condition. In 2017, Stokley embarked on a new solo journey with the release of his debut album Introducing Stokley which produced two #1 singles “Organic” and “Levels.” He now continues that journey in a new partnership with the legendary Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis’ Perspective Records. Stokley’s new single “She” is off his sophomore album due out this winter.
Jarrod Lawson
Formerly held close as one of the Northwest’s best-kept musical secrets, Jarrod Lawson has exploded as an international sensation topping charts, garnering awards, performing at prestigious venues and spawning fresh notability for Portland’s burgeoning soul music scene. Ever since Lawson released his eponymous debut album in 2014, the smokey voiced singer-songwriter and virtuosic pianist has been sending positive ripples around the globe with his powerful message music. He has completed seven successful international tours with prestigious highlights extending from Rotterdam’s 40th Annual North Sea Jazz Festival to Tokyo’s Billboard Live.
Lawson won ‘Soul Artist Of The Year’ at the 2015 Jazz FM Awards in London, and has been dubbed “the hottest talent to hit soul music in at least ten years” (Echoes Magazine). Returning to recording in 2020, six years after the release of his self-titled debut, Jarrod Lawson made his mark immediately, with entries at #1 on Amazon’s Jazz Albums chart and at #2 on Billboard magazine’s Contemporary Jazz Albums chart - for his sophomore album “Be The Change”. In late 2022, Jarrod made a bold cross-country move from his longtime home of Portland, Oregon, out to Nashville, Tennessee in hopes of connecting to the expansive community and reservoir of opportunities that “Music City” has to offer.
Saturday Line Up
Esperanza Spalding
Born in 1984 in Portland, Oregon, Esperanza Spalding (a.k.a. Irma Nejando) is an eaabibacliitoti* artist, trained and initiated in the North American (masculine) jazz lineage and tradition. Her work interweaves through various combinations of instrumental music, improvisation, singing, composition, poetry, dance, therapeutic research, storytelling, teaching, regenerative agriculture, urban land & artist-sanctuary custodianship, and growing in love as a daughter, sister, cousin, niece, auntie, great-auntie, friend, while collaboratively decolonizing within and through her hometown community.
She co-founded and serves as lead curator for Prismid Inc., a non-profit that creates and stewards artist residency, performance, and workshop space in Portland, Oregon. With her dance company Off Brand gOdds (co-founded with Antonio Brown) and the Songwrights Apothecary Lab she leads multi-week performance, teaching, workshop, and therapeutic-arts research residencies in collaboration with colleges and arts venues across the Americas, and throughout the world.
*European-African ancestored being influenced by American cultures living in Indigenous Territories of Turtle Island
Najee
Grammy nominated saxophonist and flautist, Najee has made a career following his heart and keen musical intuition by pushing musical boundaries, all of which have made him an international pioneer in the music industry. Having collaborated with everyone in the music business from Prince, Quincy Jones to Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan and Herbie Hancock, Najee’s technical agility, grace, compositional prowess, unbridled passion and fearless genre bending have made him one of the most sought after musicians of his generation. With two Platinum and four Gold albums under his belt, Najee is an icon whose musical vision spawned an entire new genre by fusing the music close to his heart…R&B and Jazz.
Richard Elliot & Rick Braun
It was only a matter of time before these two award winning heavyweights of contemporary Jazz teamed up to forge the most anticipated live tour of 2021.
Rick Braun and Richard Elliot, seasoned showmen, with their own individual signature sounds, promise to give their fans what they’ve yearned for once again. On their own, Braun and Elliot have accumulated large fan bases; and together on stage, along with the addition of their own horn section, will drive this united front home and into the fan’s favorite concert memories.
Scotland-born, Los Angeles-raised Richard Elliot began his recording career playing on songs by Motown legends Smokey Robinson and The Temptations. He’s toured with Melissa Manchester and Tower of Power and is an icon of the contemporary Jazz scene. Elliot continues to stop the show each time he plays his classic signature version of When A Man Loves A Woman.
Allentown, Pennsylvania native Rick Braun started his professional career by writing the top 20 pop hit Here With Me for REO Speedwagon. He has played in bands backing Rod Stewart, Tom Petty and Crowded House as well as successfully fronting his own solo tours.
“Could one expect anything less than perfection from two of the most colossal and prolific names in all of smooth jazz?” - Jazz Review
“With great performances emanating from both Braun and Elliot, RnR is exciting and lively, yet warm, sexy, and mellow.” - All Music Guide
Patrice Rushen
Patrice Rushen is an award-winning musician and composer who is also one of the most sought after artists in the music industry. She is a classically trained pianist who originally found success in the 70’s and 80’s with her signature fusion of jazz, pop and R&B. During this era, she composed and recorded the hit song, “Forget Me Nots,” which has been frequently covered and sampled by other artists.
Rushen is also a four-time, Grammy nominee who has composed scores for movies and television. She has been the first female musical director for many of the entertainment industry’s top award shows, which include the Grammy Awards, the Emmy Awards, the People’s Choice Awards, the NAACP Image Awards and HBO’s “Comic Relief V.”
Considered one of the world's top jazz pianists, she has performed with many artists. Among them such esteemed names as Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, Prince, Nancy Wilson, Ndugu Chancler, Carlos Santana, Christian McBride and Lee Ritenour. She is a record producer and an award-winning composer of symphonic music, some of which was commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Rushen is the ”Ambassador of Artistry In Education” at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, and has been the Chair of the Popular Music Program at USC’s Thornton School of Music from 2013 till 2023.
Rushen also spends time working with the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, NARAS “Grammy In The Schools” program and other organizations dedicated to establishing music education and mentorship programs for underprivileged youth.
Eric Darius
Eric Darius was born in Livingston, New Jersey, raised in Tampa, Florida, and now resides in Los Angeles, CA. He grew up in a very musical family to a Haitian father, who is a bass player and Jamaican mother, who is a singer and piano player. That Caribbean influence was passed down to Eric and his siblings. His older brother is a drummer and trumpet player, and his sister sings and plays clarinet.
“I first fell in love with the saxophone as a 9-year-old and began playing at the age of 10,” Eric recalls. “By the time I was 11, I started touring worldwide with Sonny LaRosa and America’s Youngest Jazz Band and playing Caribbean music in our family band. It’s truly a blessing to be from a family that not only supports my passion for music but has also given me so many opportunities to nurture my God-given gift and pursue a career in it.”
While growing up, Darius was also influenced by Earth Wind & Fire, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, George Benson, David Sanborn, Miles Davis, Bob Marley, and Grover Washington Jr., among many others. While still in high school, at the age of 17, he recorded and released his first album titled, Cruisin’, which would lay the ground work for his seven full-length albums.
Darius believes in giving back to today’s youth in the form of education. His On A Mission in the Schools initiative include making regular appearances to speak and perform with students from elementary and middle schools to high schools and at the college level. “I benefited greatly from the music-arts programs, and education is very important to me,” says Darius. “I’m an advocate for music in the schools and I want to help keep it alive. It’s important to me to expose kids to Jazz, encourage them to follow their dreams and inspire them to play musical instruments. I feel I have a responsibility to pay it forward, encourage the next generation and help preserve the future of music.”