The Sumi Tonooka Trio featuring Alchemy Sound Project

Philadelphia pianist Sumi Tonooka got her start playing with masters such as Philly Joe Jones and Odean Pope before earning renown as a composer of symphonic and chamber works, jazz tunes, and more than 20 film scores. Detroit-reared Salim Washington, a commanding improviser on tenor sax, flute, oboe, and bass clarinet, recorded prolifically as a leader during his years in Boston and New York City, though he’s now a professor of music at South Africa’s University of KwaZulu-Natal. Tenor and soprano saxophonist Erica Lindsay, who also co-leads a quartet with Tonooka, is an artist-in-residence at Bard College, where she teaches jazz music theory, arranging and composition. A major force on Seattle’s fervid jazz scene, trumpeter Samantha Boshnack leads several acclaimed ensembles, including the big band B’shnorkestra. And bassist David Arend, a longtime member of the Oakland Symphony, moves gracefully across classical, jazz, electronic, avant garde and singer/songwriter contexts.

Together, this disparate cast has honed an encompassing vision steeped in jazz’s traditions of experimentation and spiritual communion amid a perpetual search for freedom.