Due to an unexpected shift in the artists availability, we are postponing this event to a later date.  We will keep you posted on the new date.  

“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 alto saxophonist-bandleader upholds that dictum on her well-wrought March 2023 release, Phoenix, which features primarily her compositions, following Pursuance, a star-studded 2020 date on which she interpreted the transcendentally spirit-raising music of John and Alice Coltrane. The albums have made an impact – during the first half of 2023, Benjamin (who will be Artist in Residence at the Monterey Jazz Festival in September) has toured Europe and South America, packing venues with a ferocious, soulful quartet. Fortunately, the Washington Heights native will be in her hometown on June 20th, when she comes to the NJMH for a special edition of 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.