Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber
Cosmic Riddem, Esoteric Rambunction &, Eclectic Blue Cheer~Conduction #5
Part of: Afrofuturism and Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber Workshop
Performers
Burnt Sugar Arkestra Chamber
Shelley Nicole, Vocal, Percussion, and Conduction
Lisala Beatty, Vocals
Sequoyah Murray, Vocals
Bruce Mack, Vocals and Synthesizer
Julia Kent, Cello
JS Williams, Trumpet
Lewis "Flip" Barnes
V. Jeffrey Smith, Saxophones
Avram Fefer, Saxophones
Dave "Smoota" Smith, Trombone
Leon Gruenbaum, Piano and Samchillian
Ben Tyree, Electric Guitar
Keith Witty, Bass
LaFrae Sci, Trap Drums, Electronics, and Conduction
Marque Gilmore tha' Inna•Most, Trap Drums, Electronics, Conduction
Jared Michael Nickerson, Electric Bass and Conduction
PARTICIPANTS
Lauren Hayes, Harp
Miss Olithea, Vocals
Julian Terrell Otis, Vocals
Jose F. Solares, Saxophones
Oliver Tuttle, Trombone

Support for Afrofuturism is provided by the Howard Gilman Foundation and Bank of America.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Support for the visual arts components of the Afrofuturism festival has been provided by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation.
Lead support for workshops and master classes is provided by Beatrice Santo Domingo, and Mr. and Mrs. Anthony B. Evnin and the A.E. Charitable Foundation.
Workshops and master classes are also made possible, in part, by Mr. and Mrs. Nicola Bulgari.
Bios
Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber
Founded in 1999 by The Village Voice icon Gregory Stephen Ionman Tate and co-led with Dayton-native monster-groove bassist Jared Michael Nickerson, Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber was conceived as multigenerational, multigender, and multiethnic forum for the New York City improvisational musicians to compose, record, and perform material that reflects the breadth and depth of American music in the 21st century.
The intent of The Arkestra Chamber, through the deployment of Butch Morris’s conduction system, is to make every performance a fresh interpretation of its constituent parts. Rather than be limited to the straightjackets that the commercial recording industry uses to market contemporary Black music, Burnt Sugar freely moves among many styles, eras, and genres to devise its own exciting hybrids. These hybrids are based on a solid foundation of various musical traditions and the use of cutting-edge music technology. In this sense, the group mission honors its deepest inspirations, the first postmodernists of American music: Duke Ellington, Sun Ra, Parliament-Funkadelic, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago.
As with any venture of this ambitious nature, audience development must come in many forms—live performance, magazine and newspaper profiles, and cutting-edge recordings. Because of the necessity to build the TruGroid brand, Burnt Sugar and its collective must continually generate new product that highlight The Arkestra Chamber’s continual metamorphosis integrating R&B vocal extrapolations, rock ‘n’ roll–guitar brio, free jazz horn explorations, 20th-century string dissonance, and up-to-the-minute electronic manipulation.
Music must be heard—especially music designed to push back current musical boundaries. Burnt Sugar and TruGroid fill a vacuum in terms of reestablishing a presence and profile for American experimental music on the world stage that is conversant with the idioms and recording techniques of hip-hop, drum and bass, jazz, and alternative rock. In today’s musical context, there are few American bands like Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber that are both innovative on stage and in the recording studio.