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A cutting-edge drummer, composer, producer, and sonic collagist, Makaya McCraven is a multitalented force whose inventive process and intuitive, cinematic style defies categorization. Blurring the boundaries of jazz and electronic music, his “hypnotic, wholly new and radically communal” (Pitchfork) 2018 album Universal Beings—featuring Shabaka Hutchings, Tomeka Reid, Jeff Parker, and other greats—made ‘Best-of’ lists in the New York Times, Billboard, NPR, The Guardian, and Pitchfork. 2021’s Deciphering the Message saw him sampling and engaging with the venerable Blue Note Records catalogue. His newest album, In These Times, is the triumphant result of a project more than seven years in the making—the album he’s been trying to make since he started making records.

A collection of polytemporal compositions inspired as much by broader cultural struggles as it is by McCraven’s personal experience as a product of a multinational, working class Chicago musician community, In These Times encompasses all he’s lived through, while also pushing the music forward. Stereogum called it “a beautiful, beautiful record…deeper and more lush than anything he’s done to date”, while Paste Magazine said that “In These Times is like oxygen in the very lungs of jazz, and McCraven’s rhythms like its heartbeat.”

McCraven will be joined by Junius Paul bass, Josh Johnson alto saxophone, and Joel Ross vibes.