LOS ANGELES, CA- There is something going on with jazz music in Los Angeles.
Actually, there has been something going on for quite some time. I just don’t think Los Angeles gets enough credit for it.
When we talk about the great jazz cities, Los Angeles doesn’t always enter the conversation as quickly as some of the more obvious places. Yet generations of extraordinary musicians have come through this city, learned here, collaborated here and, perhaps most importantly, pushed the music forward here. And if you want to understand what jazz in Los Angeles looks and sounds like today, Terrace Martin is as good a place to start as any.
That made seeing Martin celebrate the centennial of Miles Davis at the Skirball Cultural Center on July 23 feel particularly appropriate. The Skirball’s 29th season of Sunset Concerts was itself presented as a celebration of jazz, with Martin’s performance specifically honoring Davis’s centennial.
There is an obvious danger in comparing any contemporary musician to Miles Davis, so I’m not interested in doing that. Miles is Miles.
But there is something about Terrace paying tribute to him that makes perfect sense.
Miles Davis was never content with jazz simply remaining what it had been. Throughout his career, he kept searching, experimenting and absorbing the sounds happening around him. Terrace, in his own way and in his own generation, has demonstrated that same refusal to treat jazz as something that needs to remain inside clearly defined borders.
Jazz. Hip-hop. R&B. Funk. Soul.
For Terrace Martin, those distinctions have always seemed secondary to the music itself. His career has moved freely between all of them, from working with Snoop Dogg to Herbie Hancock to Kendrick Lamar, while his own records have continuously synthesized jazz, R&B and hip-hop. That musical openness isn’t some recent development either. Terrace grew up in South Central Los Angeles as the son of jazz drummer Ernest “Curly” Martin, studied under Reggie Andrews and came of age among an extraordinary circle of Los Angeles musicians that included Kamasi Washington and Thundercat.
I got to witness a little bit of that musical ecosystem firsthand years ago.
I remember sitting in on a recording session where Terrace, Ronald Bruner, Thundercat and Robert Glasper awere essentially messing around with musical themes and ideas for what would eventually become parts of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. At the time, I was fascinated by what I was hearing. These were musicians with serious jazz vocabulary applying those ideas to music that existed far beyond what most people would conventionally call jazz.
Then the world heard it.
Terrace became one of the key musical contributors to To Pimp a Butterfly, an album whose personnel brought together a remarkable collection of musicians from jazz, hip-hop, R&B and funk. Martin’s contributions included production, saxophone and keyboards, while musicians including Thundercat and Robert Glasper also played throughout the record.
That album helped remind a massive mainstream audience that jazz hadn’t gone anywhere. It had simply continued evolving.
And that is part of why I think Los Angeles deserves more credit in the modern jazz conversation.
There is a community of musicians here for whom jazz isn’t necessarily a destination. It’s part of their musical language. They can play jazz, produce hip-hop, make an R&B record, improvise onstage and then bring all of those experiences back into whatever they do next. Terrace’s career may be one of the clearest examples of that philosophy.
So there was something wonderfully circular about watching him turn his attention toward Miles Davis.
Miles spent his career moving the art form forward. Terrace has spent much of his career refusing to allow the art form to sit still.
On this beautiful summer evening at the Skirball, that connection felt alive.
Before Terrace took the stage, harpist Brandee Younger offered another example of just how expansive contemporary jazz can be. Her music draws connections between spiritual jazz, classical music, R&B and hip-hop, with Alice Coltrane serving as one of the transformative influences on her musical development. Younger has since become a formidable bandleader in her own right, earning a Grammy nomination for “Beautiful Is Black” and winning the 2024 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Album for Brand New Life.
Listening to Younger pluck the strings of her harp in the cool summer evening as the sun slowly disappeared behind the hills was a true joy. There was something almost idyllic about the combination of instrument, setting and circumstance. I’ve certainly heard the harp countless times before, but watching Younger work the instrument from only a short distance away gave me a renewed appreciation for just how expressive it can be. In her hands, the harp wasn’t merely delicate or ethereal. She could make it rhythmic and percussive, warm and soulful, or allow individual notes to shimmer and seemingly hang in the evening air.
That versatility also made Younger particularly well suited for an evening devoted to celebrating the continued evolution of jazz. The harp still isn’t an instrument most people immediately associate with the genre, which made watching her command it all the more fascinating. Yet Younger never made its presence feel novel or unusual. Instead, she demonstrated just how naturally the instrument can occupy this musical space, building upon a jazz-harp tradition associated with artists such as Dorothy Ashby and Alice Coltrane while continuing to push its possibilities into her own generation. Younger has specifically cited both Ashby and Coltrane as foundational influences on her development as a jazz harpist.
Her set moved through “BBL,” “UNREST I,” “UNREST II,” “TURIYA & RAMAKRISHNA,” “UNSWEPT CORNERS” and “GADABOUT SEASON,” giving the audience a beautiful introduction to an instrument and an artist capable of sounding both rooted in jazz tradition and entirely contemporary.
And as daylight slowly gave way to the evening, it was difficult to imagine a more fitting prelude to what Terrace Martin was about to do with the music of Miles Davis.
Then came Terrace.
Backed by a tremendous group of musicians, including Charlie Bereal on guitar and Phoelix on keys and vocals, Martin took Miles’s music and made the evening feel less like a museum exhibition than a celebration of possibility.
And really, that’s what I wanted from this show.
I didn’t want a simple recitation of Miles’ Davis repertoire.
I wanted to hear his musical spirit in the hands of musicians who understand that the greatest tribute you can pay to someone who moved music forward is to keep it moving.
There was another element of the evening that shouldn’t be overlooked either: the Skirball itself.
If you’ve never attended one of the Sunset Concerts there, put it on your radar.
There aren’t many better ways to spend a summer evening in Los Angeles. The stage sits outdoors in the Skirball’s hillside courtyard, and the entire experience has an atmosphere that feels removed from the city even though you’re still very much in it. The concerts are free with advance reservations, giving people an opportunity to discover artists, hear unfamiliar music or simply experience a great performance without the increasingly significant expense that often accompanies live music. The Terrace Martin and Brandee Younger evening also included DJ sets from Wyldeflower before the performances and during intermission.
We should value opportunities like that.
Because sometimes appreciating a city’s musical culture requires actually showing up for it.
Los Angeles has jazz history, certainly. But I’m increasingly interested in its jazz present.
It’s there in musicians like Terrace Martin and in the community of players around him. It’s there in the way jazz continues bleeding into hip-hop and R&B without asking anyone’s permission. It’s there when a harpist like Brandee Younger can reach backward toward Alice Coltrane while creating music unmistakably her own. And it was there on a summer evening at the Skirball, when one of Los Angeles’s most restless musicians celebrated one of jazz’s most restless innovators.
Miles Davis helped change what jazz could be.
Terrace Martin is part of a generation of Los Angeles musicians still asking that same question:
What can it become next?
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LIVE CLIPS
Terrace Martin Celebrates Miles Davis and the Spirit of LA Jazz
