The 35th annual Earshot Jazz Festival is here, and we are thrilled to welcome you to a once-in-a-lifetime day of music at Town Hall Great Hall on October 15 with Sona Jobarteh and Chief Adjuah.
Tickets sold seperately below.
Sona Jobarteh on 10/15 @ 2:30 pm
Join us for this performance on Sunday, October 15 at 2:30 pm PDT at Town Hall Great Hall. This event is in-person*. Tickets are $12-65.
Learn more about Sona Jobarteh’s performance.
Sponsored by SAMA
Preserving her musical past, Sona Jobarteh innovates to support a more humanitarian future. The spirit of Sona Jobarteh’s musical work stands on the mighty shoulders of The West African Griot Tradition; she is a living archive of the Gambian people. With one ear on the family’s historic reputation, one on the all-important future legacy and her heart in both places, she is preparing a place today for the next generation. Her singing and Kora playing while fronting her band, spring directly from this tradition.
Sona Jobarteh has performed to crowds from the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles to Symphony Space in New York, and she’s sold out the Barbican in London, Cologne’s Philharmonie, and the Seine Musicale in Paris. These performances are under-pinned by her skills as a composer arising from early days at London’s RCM and Purcell School of Music.
Jobarteh’s work extends into other art genres. In 2010 she scored the film Motherland in and in 2022 the Hollywood blockbuster Beast, starring Idris Elba. She co-wrote a track on LL Cool J’s latest with Q Tip, and filmed several of her live shows for CBS’ 60 minutes.
Her dedication to spreading powerful humanitarian messages through her songs and her stage performances had led Jobarteh to give back to her community in other ways. She is active in social change and leads by her own example. Sona founded The Gambia Academy, a pioneering institution dedicated to achieving educational reform across the continent of Africa.
“Sona Jobarteh is Africa’s first female griot kora virtuoso, and also a fine singer and composer, blending traditional music, blues and Afropop to impressive effect” –Robin Denselow, The Guardian
*Earshot Jazz COVID-19 Policy: Earshot recommends that all ticket holders be vaccinated. Masks are strongly encouraged unless actively eating or drinking. Policy subject to change. Full COVID policy here.
Sona Jobarteh photo courtesy of FLI
Chief Adjuah (formerly Christian Scott) on 10/15 @ 7:30 pm
Join us for this performance on Sunday October 15 at 7:30 pm PDT at Town Hall Great Hall. This event is in-person*. Tickets are $12-65.
Learn more about Chief Adjuah’s performance.
Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah [formerly Christian Scott] is a two-time Edison Award-winning, six-time Grammy Award-nominated, Doris Duke Award in the Arts Award-winner. He is a sonic architect, trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, and designer of innovative technologies and musical instruments (including The Stretch Music app, Adjuah Trumpet, Siren, Sirenette, Chief Adjuah’s Bow and Chief Adjuah’s N’Goni). He is the founder and CEO of the Stretch Music App and Recording Company. Chieftain and OBA of the Xodokan Nation, Chief Adjuah is the grandson of Louisiana luminary and legend, the late Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr., and Grand Griot of New Orleans and Guardians Institute founder, Herreast Harrison. He is also the nephew of Jazz innovator and NEA Jazz Master saxophonist-composer, Big Chief Donald Harrison Jr. Adjuah (and his twin brother Kiel Adrian Scott) joined his grandfather’s Guardians of the Flame banner in 1989 at the age 5.
Since 2001, Adjuah has released thirteen critically acclaimed studio recordings, four live albums, and one greatest hits collection. He is widely recognized as the progenitor of the “Stretch Music,” style. A 21st-century approach that asserts genre blindness and an ethnomusicological approach to limitless fusion that heralded NPR to hail him as “Ushering in a new era of Jazz” and JazzTimes to mark him as “Jazz’s young style God.” and “the architect of a commercially viable fusion”. He has collaborated with a number of notable artists, including Prince, Thom Yorke, Flea, Common, Thundercat, Marcus Miller, Ron Carter, Eddie Palmieri, McCoy Tyner, Allen Toussaint, Stefon Harris, David Sanchez, Poncho Sanchez, Robert Glasper, rappers Mos Def (Yasin Bey), Talib Kweli, A$AP Ferg, Wiki, Your Old Droog, Boogie, as well as heralded poet and musician Saul Williams. Adjuah scores music for his identical twin brother, writer/director, and visual artist Kiel Adrian Scott’s filmic works. Scott is a Directors Guild of America Award recipient whose works have been honored with The Peabody Award and an NAACP Image Award.
Dedicated to a number of causes that positively impact communities, Adjuah gives his time and talents in service to several organizations which garnered him a place in Ebony Magazine’s 30 Young Leaders Under 30 nearly a decade ago.Since Adjuah’s emergence, he has been a passionate and vocal proponent of human rights and an unflinching critic of injustices throughout the world.
Adjuah’s ensemble will include Elena Pinderhughes (flute), Lawrence Fields (keys), Max Mucha (bass), and Elé Howell, Alexander Flood, and Weedie Braimah (percussion).
*Earshot Jazz COVID-19 Policy: Earshot recommends that all ticket holders be vaccinated. Policy subject to change. Full COVID policy here.
Chief Adjuah photo by Eric Ryan Anderson.
Support for the 2023 Earshot Jazz Festival provided by
