The raucous liberatory collective Harriet Tubman, formed by guitarist-vocalist Brandon Ross, bassist Melvin Gibbs, and drummer JT Lewis in 1998, advances a brash, enveloping, danceable sound fusing “genres” of Black music—“the digging of everything,” in the words of Amiri Baraka.

Naming themselves after the great Black abolitionist Harriet Tubman, the collective expresses their commitment to social and political liberation through breaking the “chains” of received aesthetic labels of Black musical forms, as Lewis has put it. Harriet Tubman will be joined for this performance by their friend and fellow traveler, the shape-shifting bandleader, composer and musician Graham Haynes.

Harriet Tubman is widely regarded for their astonishing and transporting live and recorded performances, with their 2018 album, The Terror End of Beauty, landing on the year end lists of The New York Times and Rolling Stone. Tubman’s wide-ranging musical collaborations include albums with Cassandra Wilson, who collaborated with them on Black Sun, and Pulitzer Prize finalist Wadada Leo Smith, on their album Araminta, and a forthcoming release with producer/composer/singer Georgia Anne Muldrow. 

Individually, the group’s members have performed with a who’s who of 20th-century musical figures, including Herbie Hancock, David Byrne, Henry Threadgill, the Rollins Band, Tina Turner, Archie Shepp, Femi Kuti, Tony Williams, Sonny Sharrock, Lou Reed, Muhal Richard Abrams, dead prez, and Lawrence Butch Morris. Graham's musical voyages span the 1980s co-founding of the seminal M-Base Collective; collaborations with performers in African, Arabic, and South Asian idioms; works with drum 'n' bass DJs; and, most recently, his opus Requiem for Young Black Men Assassinated by Police in America.