The Green Room

Rahsaan Barber has set on a singular path of musical excellence in performance, composition, education and entrepreneurship. Rahsaan enjoys a career that encompasses an ever-expanding range of musical styles including jazz, blues, funk, classical, fusion, soul, Latin and world music. Rahsaan’s passionate, sincere and studious approach to music-making has garnered professional appearances on stage alongside such heavyweights as Christian McBride, Brian Blade, The Temptations, Delfeayo Marsalis, The Spanish Harlem Orchestra, the late Duffy Jackson, Winard Harper, Kirk Franklin, Meghan Trainor and The Wooten Brothers. He has performed on many of the world’s most prestigious stages for music including The Ryman, The Village Vanguard, Birdland, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African-American History and Culture.

Talibah Safiya’s lyricism is truly inspiring, creating vivid, captivating stories that connect you directly to each experience. Her vocals, combined with instrumentals, blanket the audience with the warmth of soulful, earthy tones. Her career has been on an upward projection since 2011. In 2019, she travelled the U.S. on her first tour “A Deep Water Sound”. She was celebrated in 2020’s Oxford American Music issue in an article titled “The Oracle of Castalia”. Some of her many accomplishments also include performing for – Sundance, The Kennedy Center’s Arts Across America, Mempho, and Americana Fest.

Guitarist / composer Joel Harrison reunites his groundbreaking group Free Country to tour the mid-Atlantic and Southern regions of the U.S. in April 2022. In visionary arrangements of country and Appalachian tunes, Harrison gave new width and depth to the word Americana. Harrison will be joined by David Binney (saxophone), Stephan Crump (bass), and Jordan Perlson (drums). The group will perform music from all three of their Free Country records. The timeless, haunting melodies of this music anchor the flights of improvisation that the band creates anew every night. The tour is funded in part by South Arts through the auspices of the Doris Duke Fund and the Jazz Road initiative.

Jon Mueller's Afterlife Cartoons are solo acoustic percussion performances that use repetitive tom patterns and subtle shifts in grid-like pulsing to instigate overtones, phasing, and choir-like acoustic phenomena that transform the work from mere drum solo to the sonic illusion of a small orchestra. Rhythmic minimalism, contemporary phrasing, and energetic sustain drive Mueller's improvisations into a space somewhere between modern electronic music and primal drumming, inspiring audiences toward movement and contemplation.

The Memphis Jazz Orchestra was founded in October, 1992 at Joyce Cobb's night club on historic Beale Street. Since 1997 The MJO has been in residence at Alfred’s on Beale Street. The M.J.O. has distinguished itself in a series of concerts featuring such national jazz artists as guitarist Herb Ellis, trumpeter Marvin Stamm and pianist James Williams. A powerful and disciplined ensemble with virtuosic soloists and a command of many styles makes a concert by the Memphis Jazz Orchestra a truly memorable event.

Rachel Maxann is a performer who loves to bend genres with her style. In the last decade she has moved from Cincinnati, New Orleans, Los Angeles and travelled around the world performing. Each new space has allowed her to grow while experimenting with different styles of the culture. Rachel has been happy to create roots in Memphis and to share her love of Vintage Indie-Rock and Post-Modern Folklore music.

Max Gomez apprenticed in the rarefied musical micro-climate of northern New Mexico, where troubadours like Michael Martin Murphey and Ray Wylie Hubbard helped foster a Western folk sound both cosmic and cowboy. Gomez has assumed stewardship of that lineage by producing the Red River Folk Festival, a boutique event held annually in late September in the musical mountain village of Red River, NM. Judging by the company he keeps, Gomez is positioned to emerge as a prominent voice of Americana’s next generation.

Although a native of Taos, it’s fair to say Max Gomez has some Memphis in him. The critically acclaimed singer-songwriter has collaborated with local legends like Keith Sykes and Mark Edgar Stuart, so we wouldn’t be surprised if some friends stop by and sit in.

Roseanna Vitro began singing at an early age, drawing inspiration from gospel, rock, rhythm and blues, musical theatre, and classical music. Vitro has performed with Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Tommy Flanagan, Keter Betts, Kenny Werner and Fred Hersch. She sang with Lionel Hampton and toured with him and has appeared at The Blue Note, Iridium, Birdland, and Dizzy’s Jazz Club at Lincoln Center. She appeared with Steve Allen at The Town Hall at The Apollo Theater and recorded an album of Allen’s songs. In 2005 she performed and recorded with the Kenny Werner Trio at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.

She has also worked with Kenny Barron, Christian McBride, Elvin Jones, Gary Bartz, Kevin Mahogany, and David “Fathead” Newman, all of whom have appeared on her recordings.

Crosstown Arts presents Ambient Chaos: Out of Space Series, featuring Pas Musique, Robert Traxler, Sci-Fi Industries, and Colour Sound Oblivion.

Nominated for both Female Vocalist of the Year and Entertainer of the Year for three years in a row by the Tennessee Music Awards Amber Rae Dunn and her band “Amber Rae Dunn and the Mulberries” have an infectious way of captivating their audiences and making them feel like part of the show. She’s held title as Memphis Songwriters Associations Vice President for two years and co-hosts a songwriter showcase in Memphis each week called “Meet Me in Memphis” at South Main Sounds.