All great jazz media agree on this: alto saxophonist and bandleader Steve Lehman is one of the most innovative musicians in the profession. He works at the forefront like his teachers Jackie McLean, Anthony Braxton and Alvin Lucier. In a surprising way the New Yorker fuses jazz, avant-garde and hip hop into a completely new style. His last album Mise En Abîme was hailed as the Best Jazz album by more than one hundred jazz critics in the NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll. The important magazine DownBeat gave it the maximum score of five stars. With his latest project Sélébéyone Lehman again pushes back the boundaries by bringing together modern jazz, Senegalese rap, live electronic music, and underground hip hop in a raw urban experiment. Changing rhythms, electric-acoustic harmonies and a contemporary sound are part of the textual content. A completely new universe stretching into the far corners of abstraction.
