Pianist Marta Sánchez and double bassist Luke Stewart will perform in a new project, and it is truly difficult to predict what will unfold on stage. As far as their work is concerned, the word “jazz” seems like a tight and restrictive label. The second half of the concert will feature Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble. The artist cultivates and expands the tradition of Great Black Music, fusing jazz, soul, blues and elements of African origin in the concept of spiritual groove – trance music based on repetitive, organic structures.

In her playing, Marta Sánchez combines extraordinary precision and technical virtuosity with the indomitable spirit of a researcher. Listening to her work, you will find compositions that fall within the jazz aesthetic as well as innovative, experimental ones. Whereas Luke Stewart focuses – besides music, of course – on social activism and journalism as co-founder, journalist, and artistic director of the non-commercial Washington-based website CapitalBop.com. Will their concert duet during Jazztopad be the beginning of a longer collaboration?

“I consider music a mysterious spectacle of phenomena,” Kahil El’Zabar said in an interview for Improvised Conversations. He mostly plays the drum kit, various African drums, and kalimba but also sings and recites. He will be joined on stage by trumpeter Corey Wilkes (the successor to the legendary Lester Bowie in the Art Ensemble of Chicago), energetic saxophonist Kevin Nabors, and Ishmael Ali, a Chicago cellist of Arab Filipino descent. The latter’s participation in El’Zabar’s band brings to mind the great tradition of string instruments in improvised music, from Leroy Jenkins through Abdul Wadud and Billy Bang to Tomeka Reid and Fred Lonberg-Holm.