>MUSIC
Music has been making me for thirty years. I began my musical journey in New York in the early 1990s, where I founded the groups Antibalas and Ocote Soul Sounds & Adrian Quesada and was a founding member of The Dap Kings and frequent contributor to TV on the Radio. Since then, my flutes, saxophones, percussion and production have been featured on over 100 albums.
I have served as musical director at Carnegie Hall for three all-star tribute concerts: Paul Simon (2014), David Byrne/Talking Heads (2015), Aretha Franklin (2017) as well as the Music of Billie Holiday (2017) at the Apollo Theater.
Since moving to the Bay Area in 2019, I have birthed a solo flute and woodwind guided psychedelic jazz project MARTEZ and composed/performed the soundtrack to the 2022 PBS American Masters: “Roberta Flack” documentary. in Late 2024 I put together Suns of Mothers, an improv trio with Tommy Guerrero and Nino Moschella.
Lately I have been collaborating with visual/performance artist Courtney Desiree Morris and other Bay Area-based artists including Toro y Moi, Sulah Jordan, Lateef the Truthspeaker, Orchestra Gold, Platurn, and Zekarias Musele Thompson’s Togetherness Ensemble.
I am a co-founder of Keys to the City, an Oakland-based library of vintage keyboards and keyboard-activated musical experiences. (more..)
I have lived and worked in diverse locales, from the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, where I arranged and co-produced an album with Creole Palo de Mayo music legend Mango Ghost, to Sicily where I helped produce and arrange work by Palermo troubadour Fabrizio Cammarata. In 2017, I travelled to Benin, West Africa to collaborate with Angelique Kidjo and student musicians at the CIAMO arts academy to produce the “Kids Against Malaria” PSA song and video. In 2018, I served on the faculty of African American Studies at Pennsylvania State University. I was named director of the SF Jazz / Oakland Public Conservatory’s youth jazz orchestra for the fall 2019 season.
musical collaborators in past years include: Toro y Moi, Sulah Jordan, Tommy Guerrero, Orchestra Gold, Dos Santos, Coldcut, Adrian Quesada (Black Pumas), Santigold, Quantic, Angélique Kidjo, Jose James, Zara McFarland, Nona Hendryx, Mark Ronson, Jeff Bhasker, Greg Phillinganes, Willie Weeks, Dr. John (RIP), Michael McDonald, Ledisi, Anthony Hamilton, Gregory Porter, Valerie Simpson, Eric Harland, Ed Sheeran, The Roots, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Brian Jackson, Steven Bernstein, Saul Williams, Miguel Zenón, William Bell, Ricki Lee Jones, Bettye Lavette, Lizz Wright, Zap Mama, Santigold, The Roots, Lorenzo "Jovanotti" Cherubini, Sam Moore, Don Bryant, Kenny Loggins, Salami Rose Joe Louis, Chris Gabo, Moonrun, Sarah Dash, Taj and Deva Mahal, Todd Rundgren, Cee-Lo Green, Alice Russell, Melissa Etheridge, Ruthie Foster, Living Colour, Medeski, Martin and Wood, Mike Dillon and many others.
>WRITING / SCORING
I am a contributing editor at the ASME Award-winning literary travel magazine Stranger's Guide. I authored the children’s book Blackout, illustrated by NY Times bestselling illustrator Ricardo Cortes. I composed the liner notes for the 2018 Grammy-nominated Orquesta Akokan and liner notes/bios for several contemporary global music artists including Cochemea Gastelum and Okuté. In July 2020, I scored and performed music for Daveed Diggs’s performance of the poetry polemic “Fourth of July.”
>RESEARCH
My historic / genealogical, and political research work includes developmental research for HBO’s “True Detective,” and 2020 Pollie and Reed Award-winning archival research. I have facilitated critical genealogy with private clients as well as group workshops at MaxFunCon, University of California, Berkeley, and the Harker School in Cupertino, California.
* EQUIPMENT
I am an endorser for SYOS mouthpieces & Bari saxophone reeds and also play a modified Theo Wanne Durga 6 custom crafted by Matt Ambrose.