Join curator and host Ted Panken for an in-depth Desert Island Discs listening party with alto saxophonist, Lakecia Benjamin.

“I’m a fan of anybody that goes all the way,” Lakecia Benjamin told an interviewer in 2020. “I believe every time you play you should play like it’s your last time.” The three times GRAMMY-nominated alto saxophonist-bandleader, who grew up in Washington Heights, upheld that dictum on her 2023 release, Phoenix, produced by multi-Grammy-winner Terri Lyne Carrington, which featured primarily her compositions, interpreted by such stars as Dianne Reeves, Angela Davis, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Patrice Rushen, Sonia Sanchez and Wayne Shorter. It followed Pursuance: The Coltranes, another all-star 2020 date on which Benjamin interpreted the transcendentally spirit-raising music of John and Alice Coltrane. The albums have made an impact – in 2023 and the first months of this year, Benjamin and her ferocious, soulful quartet have played to packed venues around the world. Fortunately, Benjamin will be on her home turf on May 28^th, when she comes to NJMH for Desert Island Disks, playing tracks she’d want with on the proverbial desert island, and discussing them with host Ted Panken.

DESERT ISLAND DISCS: In the fall of 2015, the National Jazz Museum in Harlem debuted its version of Desert Island Discs. It’s modeled on an iconic BBC radio show, extant since 1942, which invites eminences from various walks of life to choose—and discuss—the eight records they would bring for a stay on the apocryphal desert island. For the Jazz Museum’s expanded version curated and hosted by esteemed journalist Ted Panken, the presenters are jazz musicians, who will present a cohort of music, of any genre, that was essential in the formation and evolution of their musical personality.

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