Lakecia Benjamin

Lakecia Benjamin (alto sax), Zaccai Curtis (piano), Enoch (EJ) Strickland (drums), Ivan Taylor (bass)

The saxophonist, composer and arranger Lakecia Benjamin was born and educated in New York. She started playing the saxophone at the Fiorello LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts. She later attended New York’s renowned New School University, starting to play with figures including Clark Terry and Reggie Workman, who opened the doors enabling her to work with musicians like Rashied Ali, David Murray, Vanessa Rubin and Anita Baker.

Since then, her career has been full of collaborations with leading musicians such as Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keys, The Roots, Gregory Porter and Macy Gray. She has released four albums as a band leader; almost all of the numbers in the first two, Retox (2012) and Rise Up (2018), are her own compositions. In the third, which she brought to us at the Jazzaldia in 2022, Pursuance: The Coltranes (2020), the compositions are by Alice and John Coltrane. In her fourth and last, Phoenix (2023), produced by Terri Lyne Carrington, Lakecia Benjamin authored the majority of the compositions. This album, offering a combination of Jazz, funky soul, R&B and hip-hop, bagged three Grammy nominations and features guests including Dianne Reeves, Georgia Ann Muldrow, Patrice Rushen, Wayne Shorter, Wallace Roney, Sonia Sanchez and Angela Davis.

Lakecia Benjamin, strongly influenced by musicians such as James Brown, Maceo Parker and the Family Stone, is now a star of modern Jazz, an artist who takes the spirit of classical Jazz to another level, creating something special in every number.