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Matthew Stevens and Justin Brown

  April 7, 2018 8:00 PM
Doors Open: 7:30 PM

Guitarist and composer Matthew Stevens released Preverbal, his second album as a bandleader, on March 24, 2017. The record is a visceral statement, a kinetic exploration of harmony and rhythm driven by Stevens’s masterful playing and singular melding of elements of experimental, jazz, and rock. The album blooms and disintegrates over eight original songs that are immersive and muscular, dark and joyous. Preverbal was recorded with Stevens’s core band of Eric Doob on drums and Vicente Archer bass, plus synthesizer and deft touches of sound manipulation and studio craft. It also features a soaring guest vocal appearance from Esperanza Spalding on album closer “Our Reunion.”

Stevens’s sophomore album as bandleader comes on the heels of a big 2016: he played an integral role in the recording and sound of Esperanza Spalding’s Emily’s D+Evolution—one of the best albums of the year—and toured the globe as part of her power trio. He also has collaborated extensively with Christian Scott, acting as his musical director, performing on all of his recordings, and composing music. Preverbal is the fully realized vision of this in-demand collaborator and bandmate, the culmination of a decade spent lending an important voice to his many projects and being a bandleader.

33 year old Oakland, California, native Justin Brown is an extremely busy bi-coastal musician whose drumming with Thundercat, Gerald Clayton, Christian McBride, Stefon Harris, Kenny Garrett, Esperanza Spalding, and Vijay Iyer is simply a foretaste of his brilliant debut album as a leader with his band, Nyeusi. Part of a California-based crew that includes best friends Thomas Pridgen and Ronald Bruner, Brown is grace and fire to their pummel and power. Nyeusi—which also features keyboardists Jason Lindner and Fabian Almazan, bassist Burniss Travis, and EWI wind-controller player Mark Shim—ties together past, present, and future, with Brown helming the group with musical invention and drumming wit.

Brown’s own body of work exists more in jazz terrain, and includes Chris Dingman’s Waking Dreams, Flying Lotus’s You’re Dead!, Gerald Clayton’s Tributary Tales, Linda May Han Oh’s Walk Against Wind, Revive Music Presents Supreme Sonacy Vol. 1, Yosvany Terry’s New Throned King, and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire’s Prelude to Cora and A Rift in Decorum: Live at the Village Vanguard.


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