Join us for the Washington, D.C. premiere of seven-time Grammy^® winner Arturo O’Farrill’s tribute to one of the most provocative critics and social activists of our time: virtuosic speaker, scholar, and civil rights icon Dr. Cornel West.

Drawing traditional African American jazz, blues, and chanted sermon, this revolutionary collaboration is inspired by the current spirit of political unrest and resistance.

Dr. West is a veteran of spoken word, having created several albums and performed with artists like Prince and André 3000. He often famously remarks, “I’m a Bluesman in the life of the mind, and a jazzman in the world of ideas.”

“We are both fundamentally committed to truth […] It’s profoundly humbling,” West said about participating in this fusion. “You have to learn, you have to listen, you have to adjust, you have to adapt, you have to be flexible.”

Inspired by what he called the “innate musicality of West’s words,” O’Farrill and his Grammy^®-winning Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra will perform original compositions with West to explore arts, politics, progress, and how uncertainty and improvisation often come hand-in-hand with hope.