June is here, and the beat goes on. We’re looking at a lot of great options for live music in the Philadelphia area — and beyond, given that Princeton boasts two shows worth traveling for. But our lead item involves a pillar of the Philly jazz community, promoting an ever-urgent cause.
Ruth Naomi Floyd’s Echoes: Shattered Flesh and Breathless Souls — Friday at Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral, Saturday at Tindley Temple United Methodist
Ruth Naomi Floyd was seven years old when she was caught in the crossfire. “A bullet grazed my cheek,” she says, recalling an afternoon shootout in Philadelphia’s Fairmount neighborhood, where her father, the late pastor and activist Rev. Melvin Floyd, was working to stop gang warfare. “My father and mother spent 50 years fighting against gun violence in their ministry,” she tells WRTI. “I grew up around the importance of stopping gun violence.”
Now a prominent singer, composer and educator, Floyd revisits that mission in a stirring 10-minute piece titled Echoes: Shattered Flesh and Breathless Souls. She’ll present its premiere on June 6, National Gun Violence Awareness Day, as a centerpiece of Toll the Bell, a city-wide event organized by Penn Live Arts. Floyd — joined by Aaron Graves on piano, Paul Giess on flugelhorn and Dom Thomas on percussion, as well as four singers from the Penn Staff & Community Choir, which she leads — will perform the piece again on June 7. Both performances will take place in sanctuaries: places of worship and reflection.
But despite its heavy subject matter, Echoes is more than a dirge. “We don’t often think of redeemed beauty in the midst of terrible situations,” Floyd explains. “I wanted the piece to show that, too.” Its first movement is a lament for what’s been lost, but within that lament lies a call to action. “It’s talking about lament as resistance,” she says. “When we cry, when we grieve, when we mourn, it’s an act of resistance to all that is dark in the world.”
June 6 at 1:15 p.m., Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral, 19 South 38th Street, free; June 7 at 2 p.m., Tindley Temple United Methodist, 750 South Broad Street, free; more information.
Stella Cole — Thursday, McCarter Theater, Princeton, NJ
On the face of it, Stella Cole might seem like an all-American answer to Laufey: she’s a fresh-faced songbook warbler who blew up on TikTok, and she’s quickly ascended from sheer obscurity to stages as grand as the Kennedy Center. But Cole exudes a dramatic grasp of her material that recalls the likes of Judy Garland more than any jazz or coffeehouse crooner. She recently released an extended version of her self-titled debut, from which she’ll draw here.
June 5 at 7:30 p.m., Berlind Theater, McCarter Theater Center, 91 University Place, Princeton, NJ, $53-$63; tickets and information.
Concurrence — Saturday, Community Education Center
Indivisible is the bracing recent album by Concurrence, a beat-forward duo featuring keyboardist Paul Horton and bassist Greg Bryant. You may know them from other musical areas — Horton plays with Brittany Howard, and Bryant is the former host of Evening Jazz and The Get Down on WRTI (and my former co-host on The Late Set) — but together with drummer Marcus Finnie, they create a deep meld of in-the-pocket groove.
June 7 at 7:30 p.m., Community Education Center, 3500 Lancaster Avenue, $30 at the door; purchase tickets.
Dianne Reeves with Romero Lubambo — Saturday, McCarter Theater, Princeton, NJ
Dianne Reeves is indisputable jazz-vocal royalty — an NEA Jazz Master and a five-time Grammy winner — but also still a self-professed student of the music. She has a musical bond with the Brazilian guitar master Romero Lubambo that stretches back to her 1999 album Bridges, and it will surely be a treat to hear them in duologue. Emceeing this concert is Nicole Sweeney, the host of Evening Jazz on WRTI.
June 7 at 7:30 p.m., Matthews Theater, McCarter Theater Center, 91 University Place, Princeton, NJ, $43-$83; tickets and information.
Endea Owens & The Cookout — Sunday, June 8, South Jazz Kitchen
Endea Owens knew what she meant when she called her 2023 debut Feel Good Music. As a bassist and bandleader, she specializes in the kind of buoyant uplift that just won’t quit. You can see her putting this into practice most weeknights on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. And you can feel it in her work with The Cookout, which will surely bring a new dimension to the famous skillet cornbread at South.
June 8 at 6 and 8:30 p.m., South Jazz Kitchen, 600 North Broad Street, $35; tickets and information.