Etienne Charles

“One of jazz’s more ambitious soloists and composers” (The New York Times), the remarkable trumpeter Etienne Charles meshes a profound knowledge of the jazz tradition with the bone-deep Creole influence of his Trinidad upbringing. This exclusive performance will be the Bay Area debut of his new multi-media work Earth Tones featuring original compositions documenting peoples and regions that are (and will be) severely affected by climate change. 

A visionary bandleader, composer and multi-instrumentalist, Charles developed a strikingly original body of work combining traditional rhythms and themes from Trinidad and Haiti with a post-bop harmonic lexicon. A professor of jazz studies at Michigan State University, 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, and former member of the SFJAZZ Collective, he has staked his own claim as an innovator with a series of critically acclaimed albums, from his 2006 debut Culture Shock  to his most recent release, the 2023 quartet album Traces — a project devoted to the migrations of Afro-Descendants and Sephardic Jews in South America and the Caribbean.