Marc Cary’s Focus Trio – West Coasters David Ewell (bass) and Sameer Gupta (drums and tabla) – departs from Cary’s electronic and hip-hop vibes to work with an energetic acoustic palette. “Jazz is the rhythmic approach I’m coming from with Focus Trio,” Cary says.

Cary was raised in Washington, DC, and attended the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. After time in New York City and on tour with Benny Carter and as Abbey Lincoln’s pianist and arranger, Cary released a handful of recordings to good critical reception – Cary On (1994), Listen (1996), The Antidote (1998), Trillium (2000), Rhodes Ahead Volume 1 (2000). In 2000, Cary won the first annual Billboard/BET Best New Jazz Artist Award.

His Focus Trio revisits the acoustic jazz vocabulary with a mix of Cary’s roots in the classic jazz idiom and of the driving rhythms that recall Cary’s acoustic-electric hip-hop crossover Indigenous People group from 1999. The trio’s music might give way to up-tempo swings, to ambient explorations, or to a recording of Langston Hughes’ “Dream Deferred.”

Nevertheless, Cary pounds the keys. Get ready for some powerful piano trio.

Bringing together East Indian, West African, Native American, and African American musical traditions in an all-acoustic setting, pianist Carey leads an exceptional trio. “The concept of Focus Trio is a collaboration of the three cultures,” says Cary in a 2007 Boston Globe article. “Aside from that, playing our asses off the in the tradition of the great Duke Ellington, Max Roach, and Paul Chambers is the focus.”

Cary performed with a trio in the 2007 Earshot Jazz Festival.

Foday Musa Suso, the Gambian griot and master kora player, shares the Seattle Art Museum stage with Cary’s Focus Trio.

As a Gambian Mandingo griot, a hereditary musician and oral historian, Suso is a singer of Mandingo legends and lineages, heroes and conflicts. The Mandingo live in several West African nations. Suso brings vibrancy to the stage from his years of experience singing and playing the kora with a variety of musicians and for global audiences.

After studying kora for several years, Suso traveled with success in Europe in the 70s. Suso has enjoyed a number of collaborations with jazz artists, including Jack DeJohnette from 2003 to 2005, Kronos Quartet, and Pharaoh Sanders. The first recording of his Mandingo Griot Society in 1977 Chicago features Don Cherry. The work with that group taught jazz musicians to play arrangements of Mandingo music. He later worked with Herbie Hancock, including the track “Junku” for the 1984 Olympic Games; collaborations with Philip Glass resulted a continued musical rapport between the artists.

Suso even had some experience in 1991 and 1993 with drummer Ginger Baker, the result of years of collaboration with bassist and producer Bill Laswell, and more recently with Paul Simon. Also listen for Suso’s music on Susan Cohn Rockefeller’s recent documentary Making the Crooked Straight about Dr. Rick Hodes’s work in Ethiopia.

Earshot welcomes Suso, who now lives in Seattle, to the musical fabric here.