Alphabet City

Errata is a contemporary jazz trio that moves between highly formalized composition and intuitive improvisation. Formed in 2017 in Chicago by guitarist, cellist, and composer Ishmael Ali and rounded out by close friends Eli Namay and Bill Harris, the trio combines elements of jazz, 20th-century classical music, and improvised music with rhythmic language influenced by Steve Lehman and Henry Threadgill. Their music exists between discernibility and noise, regularity and irregularity. A listening experience for all styles of jazz fans. 

This event is sold out but you can still tune in for the livestream.  

Kente All-Stars II rounds out Kente’s Summer Madness Series and its spotlight on renowned jazz musicians from the region. This all-star formation includes three of Pittsburgh’s most recognized and favored artists: Dwayne Dolphin, bass; Tom Wendt, drums; and Alton Merrill, piano. Joining them as their special guest is alto saxophonist Antonio Hart.

Jimmy Heath is one of the great talents of jazz: a world-class saxophonist, composer, and arranger. In August, the Off Minor Jazz series offers an evening of Master Heath’s music, drawing on all parts of his long career. 
This concert features a quintet with a trumpet and alto saxophone frontline playing arrangements by Lynn Speakman. Discussions related to Jimmy Heath’s autobiography, I Walked with Giants, sprinkle in throughout the set.

Kente Arts Alliance presents two more blockbuster concerts in its Kente Summer Madness Series. For this concert, Kente has assembled an all-star band of renowned jazz musicians who all hail from states within the tri-state area. This formation will present a rare opportunity for them to play together as the Kente All-Stars I. Each member of the band has spent time leading his own series of groups, and each has a keenly individual sound.

This event is sold out. You can still join us by watching online via our virtual channel. 

The second of three concerts created by Yoko Suzuki exploring the history of female jazz harpists and composers and the rarely heard contributions they made to the jazz scene. This month spotlightsAlice Coltrane whose talents as a composer, singer, pianist, and harpist led her to create a distinctive style combining elements of gospel, classical, and jazz music.

Led by Pittsburgh saxophonist Ben Opie for over twenty years, OPEK is a reduced-sized big band that features some of Pittsburgh’s most vibrant and exciting musicians. OPEK started as an opportunity to showcase the music of visionary bandleader Sun Ra, and they’ve since expanded their repertoire to include Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, monster movie soundtracks, original works, and all points in between. OPEK performances are lively, engaging, and—most of all—fun! 

Kente Arts Alliance kicks off their Summer Madness concert series with Vocalist Anyah Nancy. 
A relative newcomer to the Pittsburgh music scene, Anyah Nancy performed at the 2022 Three Rivers Arts Festival and received glowing reviews.  Heavily influenced by jazz vocalists such as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone and others, Anyah Nancy and her band infuse classical jazz with modern soul and R&B.

In-person tickets for this event are sold out. You can still join us virtually. Pipas, guzhengs, ouds, and more! HarmoniZing, a Pittsburgh-based group founded with the aim of nurturing cross-cultural understanding through the arts, brings together musicians playing a diverse array of instruments for an evening of global voices and soaring music.
The concert features solos of the pipa (Chinese lute), guzheng (Chinese zither), oud (Middle Eastern lute), and tabla (Indian hand drums) and concludes with two ensemble pieces recently composed by Chinese Canadian Yao Wang and Iranian American Ehsan Matoori respectively.

The Concord Jazz Quartet returns to Alphabet City with a whole new program of music. Often in jazz, it’s the players who get most of the attention, but in this concert, the Concord Quartet  highlights the unique masters who created the songs loved by musicians and fans alike. Join us as the Concord Quartet honors and puts their own spin on everything from BeBop tunes and Third Stream songs to rarely played ‘60s gems and music from today.

An evening of performance that crosses the musical frontiers of Argentinean folklore, art song and improvisation. 
Folklore refers to a body of popular music created in Argentina and based on indigenous dance rhythms like the zamba, cueca, chacarera, carnavalito and vidala. These songs were passed on through oral tradition and were virtually unknown outside their own region until the early 20th century. 

Join us for the US debut tour of Illegal Crowns, a collective quartet that brings together the long-time collaborative trio of guitarist Mary Halvorson, drummer Tomas Fujiwara, and cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum with the French pianist Benoît Delbecq. All four artists are critically recognized as leading figures in contemporary music, and have created multiple original compositions written specifically for this group. 

Yoko Suzuki has created a brand new series of jazz concerts at City of Asylum that combine her saxophone skills with her expertise in ethnomusicology. This year Yoko explores the history of female jazz harpists / composers and the rarely heard contributions they made to the jazz scene. The first concert in a series of three spotlights the music of Dorothy Ashby. 

Pittsburgh-born bassist Dwayne Dolphin is a world-class acoustic and electric bassist, but in the late 1990s, Dwayne began playing the electric piccolo bass, an instrument rarely outside the R&B funk setting. This Off Minor concert features Dwayne playing his electric piccolo bass in a straight ahead, acoustic jazz setting, something he's never done before!

Pianist, composer, & bandleader Mara Rosenbloom has been called “a whole-hearted poet of the piano,” – she is a builder & a synthesist; a fiercely lyrical composer & improviser (All About Jazz). Mara Rosenbloom travels back to City of Asylum for her newest project of original work. 
Featuring collaborations with poets Patricia Jabbeh-Wesley (Liberia), and Airea D. Matthews (US)

Lucian Ban is a pre-eminent improvising jazz pianist originally from Transylvania, Romania. He joins Jazz Poetry 2022 to perform his newly released album of solo piano music, Ways of Disappearing, his first unaccompanied solo album. 
Ban has become known for his amalgamations of Transylvanian folk with improvisation, for his combining of 20th Century European classical music with jazz, and for his pursuit of a modern chamber jazz ideal.
Featuring collaborations with poets Yuriy Tarnawsky (Ukraine), Dmitry Bykov (Russia), Jorge Olivera Castillo (Cuba), Marcelo Hernandez Castillo (Mexico)

Portuguese vocalist-composer Sara Serpa presents her new work "Encounters and Collisions," a commission from Chamber Music America. The project draws inspiration from Somali-Italian writer Igiaba Scego's book "My Home is Where I Am."
"Encounters & Collisions" combines music, text, images and media to reflect on ideas of identity and migration influenced by Scego’s writings on the post-colonial relationships between African and Europe.