Hyde Park Jazz Festival presents Immanuel Wilkins’ Blues Blood

The Hyde Park Jazz Festival presents Immanuel Wilkins’ Blues Blood

Saturday, September 28th | 7:15pm
Logan Center | Performance Hall
915 E. 60th Street | Chicago
FREE

Alto saxophonist and composer Immanuel Wilkins burst onto the music scene in 2020 with the release of his recording debut, Omega, featuring his longstanding quartet of Micah Thomas, Daryl Johns, and Kweku Sumbry. Although Wilkins was just twenty-two at the time, his quartet had already been together for over four years, and their cohesiveness and musicality were reflected both in the maturity of their sound and in the sophistication and depth of Wilkins’ compositions. Accolades and press soon followed: Omega was named the Best New Jazz Release of 2020 by the New York Times and the Best Debut Jazz Album by NPR, and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Best Jazz Recording of 2020. Wilkins himself was awarded the prestigious Letter One Rising Stars Award, and in 2022, his sophomore album, The 7th Hand, again topped year-end lists at Jazzwise, NPR, The New York Times, The Financial Times, and Jazz Times.

Since then, Wilkins has been honored with numerous commissions and grants from, among others, The National Jazz Museum in Harlem, The Jazz Gallery Artist Residency, The Kimmel Center Artist-in-Residence Commission Program, and the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Grant, and he has presented clinics and masterclasses at The Philadelphia Clef Club of Jazz and Performing Arts, Yale University, The Consevatorium van Amsterdam, Basel Jazz Schule, The Faculty of Music in Belgrade, The Royal Conservatory of Antwerp, and Oberlin College. He also teaches regularly at NYU and the School of Jazz at the New School in New York City.

In addition to touring as a leader, Wilkins continues to record and share the bandstand with peers and longtime mentors including Jason Moran, Kenny Barron, Wynton Marsalis, Bob Dylan, Solange, Joel Ross, Gerald Clayton, and Lalah Hathaway. In 2023, he was awarded three Downbeat Critics Poll Awards: Best Alto Saxophonist, Best Rising Star Composer, and Best Rising Star Group. His quartet has toured extensively throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe and performed at festivals and venues around the world.

BLUES BLOOD | BLACK FUTURE is a multimedia performance aimed at creating a space in which to think about the legacies of our ancestors and reflect on what we leave behind to our bloodlines. The piece is composed for saxophone, piano, bass, drums, three vocalists, and an individual cooking on stage.

The presentation’s title takes its inspiration from a quote from Daniel Hamm, one of the young boys who were dubbed “The Harlem Six,” falsely accused of murder in 1964, and severely beaten by prison guards while awaiting trial. While attempting to seek medical attention for his wounds, Hamm uttered this phrase: “I had to, like, open the bruise up and let some of the blues [bruise] blood come out to show them.” (The police had refused to address Hamm’s injuries because, although they had beaten him themselves, he had no visible blood running across his skin.)

Within Hamm’s quote, the “mistaken” placement of the word blues in place of bruise lends subtly to a new, abstract reading or interpretation of the sentence. The blues as a feeling has served as a symbol of radical optimism in the face of adversity for Black folk dating back to work on the plantation. There is a dichotomy of Black people singing songs about how bad their conditions were, yet the blues is something that feels so good.

Blood is often a symbol of things ancestral and generational. The history and preparation of most foods across the African Diaspora have been passed down through oral tradition. Mothers teach their children recipes that they learned from their own mothers, and their mothers’ mothers, and so on, generating a sensorial and ancestral memory through taste and smell. The meal being cooked on-stage also figures within the sonic atmosphere. The pan and table are set up with mics, allowing the composition to fill up with the sounds of knives chopping, water boiling, and oil frying in a pan. Blues Blood | Black Future is as much about creative space-making as it is about concrete community engagement. This project also has a social impact and outreach component which involves the opportunity to feed people after each performance of the work, providing help for people in the community who are hungry and bringing people to concert halls, jazz clubs, and galleries who might usually feel like those spaces are not meant for them. This project is created in partnership with food distribution organization Food with Fam, as well as with Ghetto Gastro.

The musicians:

Immanuel Wilkins — alto saxophone
Micah Thomas — piano
Rick Rosato — bass
Kweku Sumbry — drums
Ganavya — voice
June McDoom — voice
Yaw Agyeman — voice
Pierre Serrao — cook