Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman is named after the heroic African-American who escaped slavery and helped 300 others to do the same; the trio’s music—a fusion of soul, rock, jazz, and blues—is a deep, soulful meditation on the concept of freedom.

The band’s performances were cited among the year’s “Best Jazz Performances” by the New York Times in 2017 and as the “Best Live Jazz Concert” of 2018 by NPR, and the group’s most recent recording, The Terror End of Beauty, made the  “Best Jazz Of 2018” lists of Rolling Stone Magazine and the New York Times.

Harriet Tubman is comprised of guitarist Brandon Ross, bassist Melvin Gibbs, and drummer J.T. Lewis:

Ross is a Chamber Music America New Jazz Works Grant fellow; a current ASCAP writer and publisher member, and former music director for jazz vocalist Cassandra Wilson. “Ross is a one-man atmosphere factory, availing himself of all the sounds—cries, squeaks, cracks, fuzz, whispers, organ-like echoes—that an electric guitar, in the hands of a master, can produce” (The Paris Review). 

Gibbs is a Grammy-nominated songwriter, a composer and musician who has been called “the world’s greatest bassist” by Time Out New York magazine.

Lewis has performed/recorded with over 200 artists, including jazz greats Stanley Turrentine, Roy Ayers, Herbie Hancock, and Lena Horne; pop icons Tina Turner, Sting, Lou Reed, Marianne Faithfull, Elvis Costello, Whitney Houston, Debbie Harry, Garland Jeffreys, and Vanessa Williams; and revolutionaries such as Don Pullen, David Murray, Henry Threadgill, Marc Ribot, Sonny Sharrock, Pete Cosey, Bill Laswell, Kip Hanrahan, and Vernon Reid’s Living Colour.