BrownstoneJAZZ FEST up close and personal. Intimate acoustic room live concerts.

Experience the JazzFest  in a restored 19th Century Victorian Brownstone located in Bedford Stuyvesant's Central Brooklyn Landmarked Historical Community. Where ou will feel transported back to earlier time as you walk through the doors. 

BrownstoneJAZZ Ensambles present the best of yesteryear's jazz soldiers and today's jazz frontier.  Musicians, swinging with an authentic jazz style. Something for everyone to enjoy  

Bed Stuy, B'klyn and SugarHill, Harlem were both Jazz Hey Day Communities. When Ella Fitzgerald lyricized the song 'TAKE THE A TRAIN'  connecting NYC's two jazz hubs. 

You're invited to the magic of music with Curator Debbie McClain and M.C., Bassist Eric Lemons hosting you as you uncover this old school jazz venue to enjoy a different jazz experience.   

Both Eric and Debbie have been involved in the world of music entertainment for years presenting major artist.  Their list is long. They really know their way around the business.   

NOTES
Friday through Sundays ONLY
Dress to impress
BYOBB (bring your own brown bag) 

For more than 30 years, the Tenement Museum shared stories about the people who once lived in the building it now owns. But that meant that some groups—particularly Black New Yorkers—were excluded, as there's no record of a Black family living in the apartment building at 97 Orchard Street. 

Now, with an aim to explore the full breadth of immigrant and migrant experiences, the Lower East Side museum is highlighting the stories of a Black family for the first time with a new tour titled "A Union of Hope: 1869." The exhibition tells the story of the Moore family who lived in Soho during and after the Civil War. The newly launched experience will offer an expanded schedule during February for Black History Month; reserve tickets here for $30/person.

Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes (1901–1967) held friendships with artists across generations and disciplines. He forged connections between creative professionals, encouraged the work of others, and helped build a larger network of Black creatives and intellectuals responding to, and shaping, the current events of the time. Among them were Arna Bontemps, Zora Neale Hurston, Dorothy West, Regina Andrews, Margaret Danner, Louis Armstrong, Randy Weston, and Roy DeCarava. The photographs in this exhibition offer an intimate look at Langston Hughes with students, writers, visual artists, and performers in different periods of their maturation. 

One friendship began in the classroom at Atlanta University when photojournalist Griffith Davis (1923–1993) was a student and Hughes a visiting professor. After graduating from Morehouse College in 1947, Davis became the first Roving Editor of Ebony magazine at the recommendation of Hughes. In 1948, Davis attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and rented a room in Hughes’ Harlem home on East 127th Street. Davis used Hughes’ home as a base while working as an international freelance photojournalist. Hughes used Davis’s marriage to Muriel Corrin Davis in 1952 as the basis for Simple Takes a Wife of his Simple series.

Multiple professional collaborations emerged from the mentorship, as did an enduring friendship. In this exhibition, Griff Davis’s photography is complemented by archival material from the Schomburg Center’s collections and letters reflecting decades of personal correspondence. 

The exhibition The Ways of Langston Hughes and its text are adapted from the traveling exhibition Griff Davis-Langston Hughes, Letters and Photographs, 1947 – 1967: A Global Friendship, originated at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts.

He is one of the greatest entertainers of all time. Now, Michael Jackson’s unique and unparalleled artistry has finally arrived on Broadway in a brand-new musical. Centered around the making of his 1992 Dangerous World Tour, and created by Tony Award-winning Director/Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage, MJ goes beyond the singular moves and signature sound of the star, offering a rare look at the creative mind and collaborative spirit that catapulted Jackson into legendary status. Turn it up, Broadway — MJ is here!

Run Time

2 hours 30 minutes, including intermission

Gordon Parks. Jean-Michel Basquiat. Lorna Simpson. Kehinde Wiley. Nina Chanel Abney. These names loom large in the past and present of art—as do many others in the collection of musical and cultural icons Swizz Beatz (Kasseem Dean) and Alicia Keys. Expansive in their collecting habits, the Deans, both born and raised in New York, champion a philosophy of “artists supporting artists.” The first major exhibition of the Dean Collection, Giantsshowcases a focused selection from the couple’s world-class holdings. The Brooklyn Museum’s presentation spotlights works by Black diasporic artists, part of our ongoing efforts to expand the art-historical narrative. 

“Giants” refers to several aspects of the Dean Collection: the renown of legendary artists, the impact of canon-expanding contemporary artists, and the monumental works by such creators as Derrick Adams, Arthur Jafa, and Meleko Mokgosi. Immense pieces—including the largest ever by Mokgosi—are paired with standouts such as Parks’s seminal photographs, Wiley’s revolutionary portraits, and Esther Mahlangu’s globe-bridging canvases. 

The term also evokes the strength of the bonds between the Deans and the artists they support, and among the artists themselves. Along with examining these links and legacies, the exhibition will encourage “giant conversations” inspired by the works on view—critiquing society and celebrating Blackness.

Learn more about our touring exhibitions, and bring this exhibition to your institution by emailing exhibitions@brooklynmuseum.org.

In February 2024, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present the groundbreaking exhibition The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism. Through some 160 works of painting, sculpture, photography, film, and ephemera, it will explore the comprehensive and far-reaching ways in which Black artists portrayed everyday modern life in the new Black cities that took shape in the 1920s–40s in New York City’s Harlem and nationwide in the early decades of the Great Migration when millions of African Americans began to move away from the segregated rural South. The first art museum survey of the subject in New York City since 1987, the exhibition will establish the Harlem Renaissance and its radically new development of the modern Black subject as central to the development of international modern art.

Featured artists include Charles Alston, Aaron Douglas, Meta Warrick Fuller, William H. Johnson, Archibald Motley, Winold Reiss, Augusta Savage, James Van Der Zee, and Laura Wheeler Waring. These artists will be shown in direct juxtaposition with portrayals of international African diasporan subjects by European counterparts ranging from Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch, and Pablo Picasso to Germaine Casse, Jacob Epstein, and Ronald Moody.

A significant percentage of the paintings, sculpture, and works on paper on view in the exhibition come from the extensive collections of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), including Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, Fisk University Galleries, Hampton University Art Museum, and Howard University Gallery of Art. Other major lenders include the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, with pending loans from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The exhibition will include loans from significant private collections and major European lenders.

The exhibition is made possible by the Ford Foundation, the Barrie A. and Deedee Wigmore Foundation, and Denise Littlefield Sobel.

Since the 1930s, The 92nd Street Y, New York has welcomed and supported the leading lights of American contemporary dance — providing a space for them to develop and showcase their work when other doors were closed.

This landmark 150th Anniversary performance welcomes the legendary companies whose founders made these halls their home — Ailey II, Martha Graham Dance Company, and José Limón Dance Company. Bridging generations of pioneering dance makers, the evening pairs these dance companies with leading contemporary artists — Omar Román De Jesús, Jamar Roberts, and Hope Boykin — for a one-night-only celebration of the legendary choreographers and performers who shaped modern dance. Inspired by the past, transforming for the future, join us for this once-in-a-lifetime, only-at-92NY event.

The Limón Dance Company performs José Limón’s “There Is a Time,” paired with Omar Román De Jesús’ duet for two men, “Like Those Playground Kids at Midnight.”

The Martha Graham Dance Company performs “Appalachian Spring Suite,” paired with an excerpt of a new work from Jamar Roberts.

Ailey II — The Next Generation of Dance — will perform an Ailey Classics program “Blues Suite,” paired with a world premiere by Hope Boykin, celebrating 92NY’s 150th anniversary.

Tickets include access to a new exhibition, Dance to Belong: A History of Dance at 92NY, in 92NY’s Weill Art Gallery, on view from March 12-October 31, 2024.

Highlighting thirty years of artmaking dedicated to the Black experience in America, Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other is the first comprehensive survey of the communal art-making projects that form the heart of the artist’s pioneering creative practice. Accompanied by a selection of Clark’s photographs, prints, and sculpture, the exhibition will feature five of Clark’s large-scale, collaborative projects, including her barrier-breaking The Hair Craft Project (2014) and the ongoing performance, Unraveling.

Working with a wide range of emotionally resonant materials and everyday objects—from cotton cloth and human hair to school desks and bricks— Clark encourages audiences to confront through material transformation the country’s historical imbalances and racial injustices. At the same time, Clark celebrates the complexities of the Black cultural experience. The uses of traditional craft materials, her applied knowledge of global craft techniques, and the communal collaborations that are integral to the integrity of Clark's art are among the many ways Clark represents and honors the legacies of the African diaspora in Black life.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Sonya Clark is an artist and educator renowned for mixed-media works that address race and visibility, explore Blackness, and redress history. She is the Winifred L. Arms Professor of Art and Humanities at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Previously, Clark was honored as a Distinguished Research Fellow in the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she served as chair of the Craft/Material Studies Department for over a decade. Prior to that appointment, she was the Baldwin Bascom Professor of Creative Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she taught fornine years. Clark earned an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and was honored with their Distinguished Alumni Award. She has a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her first college degree is from Amherst College, where she also received an honorary doctorate. In 2021, she was awarded additional honorary doctorates from Franklin and Marshall College and Maine College of Art.

Her work has been exhibited in over 500 museums and galleries in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Australia. Clark’s artwork is held in the collections of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Museum of Fine Art in Houston, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, among many others. Clark is the recipient of numerous awards, including a United States Artist Fellowship, Anonymous Was a Woman Award, Rappaport Prize, Art Prize, and Art Matters Grant. She has been selected for residencies at Red Gate in Beijing, China; BAU Camargo in Cassis, France; the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio, Italy; a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in Washington, DC; Civitella Ranieri in Umbertide, Italy; Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York; the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts; Indigo Arts in Portland, Maine; an Affiliate Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, Italy; and Black Rock in Dakar, Senegal, among others.

Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other is organized by the Museum of Arts and Design; Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Ml; and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

Support for the exhibition and publication Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other was provided by grants from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The exhibition is also supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

With additional support from WayMaker Media.

Now she's in New York! Alicia Keys's new musical Hell's Kitchen, inspired by the Grammy-winning musician's New York upbringing, is coming to Broadway just blocks away from the title neighborhood. Get Hell's Kitchen tickets on New York Theatre Guide.

The Hell's Kitchen musical is set in a tiny apartment in the title neighborhood, where 17-year-old Ali has big dreams and a wary mother who tries to keep Ali from repeating her past mistakes. As Ali falls for a young drummer and befriends a piano teacher in her building, she and her mother learn all the possibilities Ali's future can hold — and the racial and coming-of-age obstacles she'll have to overcome to make her dreams come true.

This new show marks Keys's second foray into Broadway theatre following the 2011 play Stick Fly, for which she composed original music. She's best known for her acclaimed music career, which has earned her 15 Grammy Awards. Keys is known for her unique sound that blends R&B, soul, hip-hop, and pop, and some of her biggest hits include "Fallin'," "If I Ain't Got You," and "Empire State of Mind." All these existing hits and more appear in Hell's Kitchen alongside previously unheard songs.

Hell's Kitchen on Broadway is at the Shubert Theatre in the Theatre District, adjacent to Hell's Kitchen. The musical premiered a little further away from the title neighborhood, though: at The Public Theater in Manhattan's NoHo neighborhood. Multiple musicals, including Manhattan native Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton, made the move uptown after premiering at the Public.

Speaking of New York natives, the entire lead creative team of Hell's Kitchen, alongside Keys, was also born and raised in the area. Director Michael Greif, a four-time Tony nominee for directing the NYC-set Rent and other shows, is from Brooklyn. Choreographer Camille A. Brown (two-time Tony nominee for the 2022 revival of for colored girls) hails from Queens, and bookwriter Kristoffer Diaz (Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity) is from Yonkers, just outside the city.

Get tickets to Hell's Kitchen in New York now.

Everybody look around, there’s reason to rejoice! The Tony Award®-winning Best Musical that took the world by storm is back.

For the first time in decades, THE WIZ returns home to the American stage with an all-new Broadway-bound adaptation. The Pre-Broadway National Tour launched this past September in Baltimore, where the beloved musical premiered 50 years ago. 

Conjuring up an Oz unlike anything ever seen before, the creative team is helmed by director Schele Williams (The Notebook, revival of Disney’s Aida) and includes choreographer JaQuel Knight (Beyonce’s “Single Ladies”), William F. Brown (book), Charlie Smalls (music & lyrics), Amber Ruffin (additional material), Joseph Joubert (music supervision, orchestrations, & music arrangements), Allen René Louis (vocal & music arrangements), Adam Blackstone (dance arrangements), and Paul Byssainthe Jr. (music direction).  They are joined by Academy Award® winner Hannah Beachler (scenic design), two-time Academy Award® nominee Sharen Davis (costumes), Emmy® and Barrymore Award winner Ryan J. O’Gara (lighting), Jon Weston (sound), Daniel Brodie (projections), Drama Desk Award winner Charles G. LaPointe (wigs), and Kirk Cambridge-Del Pesche (makeup). 

52 Walker is pleased to announce its eleventh exhibition, which will feature new work by Los Angeles–based artist Arthur Jafa (b. 1960). Lauded for his achievements as a filmmaker and cinematographer as well as a visual artist, Jafa has developed an incisive, chameleonic practice, through which he seeks to unravel the cultural significance and strictures ascribed in tandem upon Black existence in the Western world. Spanning the length of the gallery will be a site-specific installation—a plexiglass structure that Jafa refers to as a “picture unit”—whose interior will be covered from floor to ceiling in the artist’s characteristically potent imagery, drawing the viewer through its labyrinthine halls. Jafa has also created new paintings, sculptures, and a new film, all of which will be installed around the gallery, their forms and colors reflected onto the picture unit’s exterior in a charged and destabilizing kind of visual doubling. In BLACK POWER TOOL AND DIE TRYNIG, Jafa will invoke the body’s personal, political, and industrial guises in one fell swoop, deftly interweaving images and objects to create a forceful and maximal space that beckons toward engulfment and revelation alike. 

Image: Arthur Jafa, Work in Progress, 2024. © Arthur Jafa.

Terence Blanchard’s stirring drama returns following its landmark company premiere in 2021, with bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green starring as Charles, a young man faced with a fateful decision. Soprano Latonia Moore reprises her heartbreaking portrayal as Charles’s mother, Billie, with rising soprano Brittany Renee doing triple duty as Charles’s love interest, Greta, as well as the embodiments of Loneliness and Destiny. James Robinson and Camille A. Brown’s gripping production includes what is surely the only step dance in opera. Evan Rogister conducts Blanchard’s score, which powerfully melds opera and jazz.

Eminent American composer John Adams returns to the Met after a decade-long hiatus for the company premiere of his acclaimed opera-oratorio, which incorporates sacred and secular texts in English, Spanish, and Latin, from biblical times to the present day, in an extraordinarily dramatic retelling of the Nativity. El Niño brings together three of contemporary opera’s fiercest champions, all of whom make highly anticipated company debuts: Marin Alsop, one of the great conductors of our time, who has led more than 200 new-music premieres; soprano Julia Bullock, a leading voice on and off stage; and pathbreaking bass-baritone Davóne Tines. Radiant mezzo-sopranos J’Nai Bridges and Daniela Mack take turns completing the principal trio. The moving, fully-staged new production also marks the Met debut of Lileana Blain-Cruz, resident director at Lincoln Center Theater, who received universal acclaim for her Tony-nominated 2022 production of The Skin of Our Teeth.

BJ The Chicago Kid

It's been a long time coming for BJ the Chicago Kid, and not just because, after four mixtapes and one indie classic, he's now dropping his major-label debut on Motown, the modern yet deeply soulful 'In My Mind.' You've been hearing his voice everywhere though, on the songs by some of the greatest artists of our era (punctuating tracks by Dr. Dre, Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, Mary J. Blige, Kehlani and ScHoolboy Q's Grammy Award-nominated smash "Studio."). Notable Collaborations include Vic Mensa, Chance The Rapper, Dom Kennedy, Freddie Gibbs, Ty Dolla $ign, Xzibit and, most recently, OG Maco, Joey Bada$$ and Hannibal Burress. But go back even farther and you'll find BJ was fated for this life. Bryan James Sledge cooed his first note to an audience when he was five years old. His mom was a choir director and his whole family was in the congregation: BJ the youngest of three boys who all sang on Sunday. Yet outside was the constant backbeat of his youth: trunk music, rap and old school soul, the same thump that he'd hear falling asleep at night, and at the whole-block cookouts that happened every Saturday. His dad, though also a choir director, exposed him to that secular inspiration firsthand. By night his father did concert security, and he took his boy to gigs. Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation Tour (the one with the panther) changed BJ forever, and the experience got swirled up with the stuff he heard at home: the Chi-Lites, Luther, Curtis, even Babyface. The kid wrote his first song as a teen. He'd been focused on drums, and you can still hear that in the way his voice clings to the pocket, but, as happens, he caught feelings for a girl and wrote a poem about it. Producer Kevin Randolph, a family friend, saw promise in BJ's pen and mentored him in the ways of song. And when it was time, he helped BJ secure his ticket to Los Angeles. That first job, singing backup with gospel duo Mary Mary, led to studio time (vocals, songwriting) with Lalah Hathaway, Musiq Soulchild, Joe, Mario, and Mary J. Blige, among others. In 2005 alone he went into the booth with Stevie Wonder and onto the Grammy stage with Usher and James Brown. A year later came the big one: Kanye West's "Impossible" for "Mission: Impossible III." It's understandable if you've heard BJ and not known it — the man's melody is classic and his voice is elastic; he sounds like a sample. But he proved his knack for present-day soul on 2012's self-released album, 'Pineapple Now-Laters,' a diverse collection of songs that moved from a cappella excellence to swaggy rap 'n' blues to the heartfelt "His Pain," featuring Kendrick Lamar. Call it a favor returned — BJ's on Lamar's 2009 EP, and works with the whole T.D.E. family. ScHoolboy Q's single "Studio" followed, capping an impressive run of collaborations with West Coast legends like Warren G and Xzibit, and Chicago new-schoolers like Chance the Rapper and Vic Mensa. BJ's 'M.A.F.E. Project' tape in 2014 broadcast the message: "Music Ain't for Everyone." Of course, BJ was destined for the winner's circle, and just as he came up in a supportive Chicago 'hood, he's been building up his music community steadily. He even pitched in on Dr. Dre's long-awaited Compton on the way to now, but it's his time to shine, and for fans of all those guys to realize they've been fans of BJ all along. 'In My Mind' is the first true open door to his world, to a place where the Bible comes first, but Belly might be second. Where blunts burn and oxtails simmer. It's a window into the psyche of a soul man who watches Tom & Jerry regularly, but keeps up with the bangers from around the way. This man who sings "Church" — with a hook that so perfectly illustrates the line he walks: "She said she wanna drink, do drugs, and have sex tonight/But I got church in the morning" — is not so far removed from the so-called kid raised on the Windy City's South Side. Most of all, 'In My Mind' is a set of staggeringly great songs from a man who knows The Classics as well as he does The Now. Take his James Brown flip, "Woman's World," where vintage sound meets modern perspective. Or "Heart Crush," which connects a timeless sentiment (fast love's slow fizzle) with an atmospheric, alt-R&B sound. There's the steamy stuff like "Turnin Me Up," which finds BJ channeling both D'Angelo and Marvin Gaye while leading his live band. And romantic fare like "Shine," a piano ballad tailor-made to weaken knees on deployment. "New Cupid," especially, crisscrosses generation and genre with ease, borrowing the iconic "Oh yeah!" from "Mr. Big Stuff," sampling a Raphael Saadiq cut, and featuring a heartbroken Lamar. 'In My Mind' transcends basic classification — it's as imaginative as its title implies, but as real BJ the Chicago Kid's love for this music.

The fair returns to The Shed in New York this year with a new curator for Focus, more than 60 galleries from 25 countries and a extensive program of events and activations 

Set to a free jazz score by Grammy-winning artist Solange Knowles, Gianna Reisen’s Play Time features a cavorting ensemble of ten dancers in metallic and jewel-toned, business suit-inspired costumes covered in pinstripes of brilliantly eye-catching Swarovski crystals designed by Alejandro Gómez Palomo.

Gianna Reisen’s Play Time is her third work for New York City Ballet, following Composer’s Holiday (2017) and Judah (2018). Play Timefeatures a commissioned score by Grammy-Award winning singer, songwriter, and visual artist Solange Knowles, her first for a ballet company. The ballet for 10 dancers, which premiered at the 2022 Fall Fashion Gala, includes costumes by fashion designer Alejandro Gómez Palomo for Palomo Spain, featuring Swarovski crystals, and lighting by Mark Stanley.

Premiere

September 28, 2022, New York City Ballet, David H. Koch Theater

Costumes

Alejandro Gómez Palomo for Palomo Spain

Terrace Martin

A five-time GRAMMY-nominated artist, producer and multi-instrumentalist from LA’s Crenshaw District, Terrace Martin is renowned as one of the world’s leading jazz musicians AND hip-hop producers. This singular standing is captured on his countless influential collaborations including Kendrick Lamar (good kid, M.A.A.D. city & To Pimp a Butterfly), Stevie Wonder, Travis Scott, Rihanna, Snoop Dogg, Herbie Hancock, and Leon Bridges’ “Sweeter” (performed at the DNC). From his own acclaimed releases like the protest anthem “PIG FEET”, and his GRAMMY-nominated, star studded album, DRONES (featuring Kendrick, YG, Leon Bridges, Cordae, and more) to the GRAMMY-nominated Dinner Party (The musical supergroup of Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper, Kamasi Washington and 9th Wonder), and his most recent single "Chucks (feat. Channel Tres)". Among the most versatile creatives in a generation, Terrace's path is leading him in parallel with the greats like Quincy Jones or Dr. Dre, while also launching his vibrant, progressive, genre-crossing record label Sounds of Crenshaw.

BAM’s corner of Fort Greene transforms into a pulsing celebration of community, discovery, and collective joy at this beloved annual festival. We join with longtime neighbors, first-time visitors, the DanceAfrica Council of Elders, and our partners at Weeksville Heritage Center and The Billie Holiday Theater (formerly Restoration Arts) to create the nation’s largest festival of African dance—and Brooklyn’s unofficial start of summer. Featuring the iconic outdoor bazaar, traditional dance and music from Cameroon, classes, workshops, late-night dance parties, and FilmAfrica’s lineup of cinematic gems, this can’t-miss cultural celebration electrifies Brooklyn for a 47th year.

The second annual presentation of Studio Sound—a performance series that champions artists and musicians whose work engages new possibilities for sound and music—will feature interdisciplinary artist and writer Sable Elyse Smith. Exploring auditory art forms through both live and recorded performance, this ongoing series suggests an expanded history of art in which sound plays a central role.

Smith’s work draws from the legacy of Conceptual art, using video, sculpture, photography, text, and now sound to confront the mundane and pervasive impacts of systemic oppression. At MoMA, Smith will present a new musical composition and video installation in the form of an opera, with ticketed performances and an installation on view during Museum hours. Part of a larger ongoing project, this work tells a story of queer love between two Black women set in a surreal environment. Unfolding across multiple scenes, the performance explores the political, collective, and dramatic potential of the voice as well as the ways in which language dissolves through sonic expression.

Organized by Martha Joseph, The Phyllis Ann and Walter Borten Assistant Curator of Media and Performance, with May Makki, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance. Performances produced by Lizzie Gorfaine, Associate Director and Producer, with Nora Chellew, Assistant Performance Coordinator, Performance and Live Programs.

The company that changed American dance forever returns to Brooklyn with a robust program of dazzling recent works and modern classics. See “America’s most popular dance company” (The New Yorker) on the BAM stage, where Alvin Ailey first performed in 1956. Over 65 years later, the company continues to champion African American artistry and forge a bold new path for Ailey’s legacy—and modern dance itself.

Please note: Tickets for this event go on sale to the general public in February 2024.

One of the UK’s most exciting and innovative young drummers and producers, Yussef Dayes has been deeply involved in jazz as long as he can remember. Best known for work with his brothers in United Vibrations, and also as one half of electrifying duo Yussef Kamaal, he’s been developing his sound since age four when his dad bought him his first drum kit.
 
Born and raised in South East London, as a kid Yussef was practicing non-stop: “My parents were strict – if I was gonna do this, I had to take it seriously.” His father was a bass player in New York in the 70s, and brought home an education’s worth of jazz vinyl that the Dayes brothers all grew-up on – Yussef and his bassist brother Kareem would play along to their dad’s records for hours at a time. This was the closest he got to formal jazz lessons until, when he was ten, he studied under Billy Cobham (Miles Davis’ drummer). Yussef considers this to have been the most impactful thing for his progression.
 
At school, many of Yussef’s peers were aspiring MCs, and he considers grime and hip-hop heavily influential to his output: “That same energy and those different flows, I put into my drums.” Add to this his Jamaican father’s reggae collection, his late mother’s love of the Beatles and country, and his brother Ahmad producing jungle tracks, Yussef says: “there was good music in every room” – and this breadth of taste, blended with sounds found while travelling (notably time spent in Senegal) is audible in his exhilarating combination of sounds.
 
These varied influences would be put into a live setting from a young age – from ten years old he was playing shows with his brothers and their friend Wayne Francis II in an afrobeat and rock-influenced spiritual jazz group. Then, cementing him as one of the need-to-know artists in the UK scene, it was in 2015 that Yussef Kamaal was born. A duo with fellow Londoner Kamaal Williams, their 2016 album Black Focus, with its dancefloor sensibilities and funk-infused breakbeats, would become one of the most heralded jazz records of recent times, melding UK sounds with those of the US scene. Certified silver, the album won the duo the 2017 Jazz FM award for Best Breakthrough Act. With their rapturous shows, both groups have helped hone Yussef’s thrilling, rapid-fire live presence (he refers to it as an alter-ego, “the beast” that takes over when he’s playing).
 
2018 saw the release of ‘Love Is The Message’ - Yussef’s transcendental first solo track, self-released on Cashmere Thoughts. Following this in 2019, Yussef’s solo journey continued to flourish releasing an AA single entitled DUALITY, consisting of ‘For My Ladies’ and ‘Othello’.
 
A testament to the breadth and scope of his work in 2019, Yussef sound tracked and curated the Louis Vuitton dinner show for Paris Men’s Fashion Week in January 2019, collaborating with none other than Virgil Abloh and Benji B.
 
Currently, in 2020, Yussef and fellow South East London musician Tom Misch have released their joint album entitled What Kinda Music, distributed on legendary jazz label, Blue Note. The album curated by drummer and singer-songwriter expresses music’s ability to tick the boxes of all-genres and to appeal to an incredibly vast audience. The album has gained much global success including reaching #4 in the UK Official Charts, #1 Current Contemporary Jazz Album in the US Billboard Charts and #52 Album in the US Billboard Charts.
 
With a solo album in the pipeline, Yussef says working solo allows him to be free: uncompromising in choices of sounds and collaborators. He’s running with that freedom, working on multiple projects as a producer and player with some of the key names in the UK jazz scene and beyond.
 
It’s an exciting time ahead, with more of those soaring, epic, and intricate soundscapes that don’t sound quite like anything else to come. “Drumming is a way of communicating and expressing yourself”, he says – and in 2020, there’s no doubt Yussef Dayes is going to be the one leading the conversation.

The Soul Rebels

Brass sensation The Soul Rebels are riding high in 2023 after receiving national attention following the release of theirnew album,Poetry In Motion.The eight-member collective appeared on Sony Music artist G-Eazy featuring Lil Wayne’s new single ‘When You’re Gone”, Def Jam artist Dave East and Nas’ “Godfather 4” single, Big Freedia and Icona Pop’s “Pipe That”, and reached fans with original singles “Greatness” featured as ESPN's official College Hoops theme anthem, and “Good Time” featured onNetflix’s#BlackAF and Dad Stop Embarrassing Me!
 
The Soul Rebels have impressed viewers with two recent appearances on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, featured on NPR's Tiny Desk series with Wu Tang Clan frontman GZA,headlined the global TED Conference, and appearedon the official soundtrack for Universal Pictures' hit comedy Girls Trip.
 
On the heels of their new supergroup with The Wu Tang Clan, The Soul Rebels continue to expand their international reach touring four continents including Europe, Australia, China, South Korea and Japan. Their explosive stage presence has led to live collaborations with the likes of Katy Perry, Nas, G-Eazy, DMX, Robin Thicke, Macy Gray, Portugal. The Man, Robert Glasper, Pretty Lights, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis and Matisyahu.

The Soul Rebels started with an idea - to expand upon the pop music they loved on the radio and the New Orleans brass tradition they grew up on. They took that tradition and blended funk and soul with elements of hip hop, jazz and rock all within a brass band context. The band has built a career around an eclectic live show that harnesses the power of horns and drums in a deep pocket funk party-like atmosphere. The Soul Rebels continue to chart new territory as they feature in major films, tour globally, and combine topnotch musicianship with songs that celebrate dancing, life, funk and soul.

Edges of Ailey is the first large-scale museum exhibition to reflect on the life, work, and legacy of visionary artist Alvin Ailey (b. 1931, Rogers, Texas; d. 1989, New York, New York). Widely recognized for the dance company he founded in 1958, Ailey imagined and cultivated a platform for modern dance through his innovative repertoire, interdisciplinary sensibility, and support of other dancers and choreographers. Presented in the Museum’s 18,000+ square-foot fifth-floor galleries, this multifaceted presentation encompasses a multimedia exhibition, daily performance program, and scholarly catalogue to offer a richly layered experience for understanding the artist anew. 

Edges of Ailey will showcase an ambitious daily program of live performances, including works from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater repertory and new commissions as well as workshops, classes, and panels. The exhibition situates Ailey within a broader social, creative, and cultural context, illuminating the artists who influenced and collaborated with him, the spaces and scenes he frequented, and the dynamic themes explored within his dances through painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, film and video, rehearsal footage, ephemera, and other archival materials. 

Edges of Ailey is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in close consultation with the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation. The exhibition is curated by Adrienne Edwards, Engell Speyer Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, with Joshua Lubin-Levy, Curatorial Research Associate, and CJ Salapare, Curatorial Assistant.