Shabaka Hutchings brought his new experimental flute project to Portland, OR’s Newmark Theatre on Friday as part of Biamp Portland Jazz Festival presented by PDX Jazz.
After rising to international prominence as the saxophonist and bandleader of Sons of Kemet and The Comet is Coming, Shabaka shocked the world when he announced he would put down his horn for good in 2024 and shift his focus to playing flutes (before a similar announcement from André 3000, who appears on Shabaka’s upcoming album). On Friday night, the modern jazz luminary returned to Portland, OR, where he performed his final shows with Sons of Kemet in 2022, to introduce his new band and unveil his new experimental direction.
Like Sons of Kemet, which was comprised of sax, tuba, and two drummers, Shabaka’s new project featured a unique instrumentation with Charles Overton on harp, Chris Sholar on electronics, Portland’s own Esperanza Spalding on standup bass plus vocals and whistling, Burniss Travis on electric bass, and Austin Williamson on drums. Shabaka played clarinet and a number of different flutes from various cultures and makers throughout the spiritually charged performance, which featured a lot of interactive improvisation and loosely arranged compositions, including songs from Shabaka’s recent debut solo EP, Afrikan Culture.
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The group’s ethereal explorations lacked the driving rhythms that made Sons of Kemet so powerfully dynamic, but what the concert lacked in bombast, it made up for in beauty. With Overton’s harp setting a celestial tone and Sholar’s pre-recorded samples opening up worlds of musical possibilities, the band provided the perfect backdrop for Shabaka’s flutes.
“More than an instrumentalist, I try to be a producer in that I try to produce the context that I place my instrumental work in and try to make that context as fulfilling as possible for me but as holistic as possible…” he said of his role in an interview with local news network KOIN6.
Shabaka waxed philosophical between songs, adding to the concert’s spiritual dimension with talk of “restructuring the internal [to] see how that affects our aims,” and said the band’s job was to play what was “essential at the moment in terms of digging deep in regions that haven’t been explored.”
Other highlights were the two times that he stepped out from behind his microphone to the front of the stage and played moving acoustic flute solos for the packed theater. His imposing stature and singular sense of style shined as he stood erect in long flowing garments, like a graceful Indian guru with an Afro-futurist wardrobe playing a Japanese flute. The performance echoed and embodied the sentiment expressed by Jon Batiste on night one of Portland Jazz Festival when he said, “[Music] is more than entertainment; it’s a spiritual practice.”
Click below to view a gallery of photos from Shabaka Hutchings at Portland Jazz Festival courtesy of photographer Norm Eder. For a full list of the festival’s remaining shows, click here.
Shabaka just announced his first full-length solo album, Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace, due out April 12 via Impulse! The album features collaborations with André 3000, Esperanza Spalding, Moses Sumney, Floating Points, ELUCID (of Armand Hammer), Brandee Younger, Laraaji, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Saul Williams, and more. Pre-order the album here, listen to the first single here, and click below to view Shabaka’s upcoming tour dates.
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