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Ezra Collective is a British jazz quintet composed of drummer and bandleader Femi Koleoso, bassist TJ Koleoso, keyboardist Joe Armon-Jones, trumpeter Ife Ogunjobi, and tenor saxophonist James Mollison. The group fuses elements of afrobeat, calypso, reggae, hip-hop, soul and jazz, and frequently collaborates with fellow London-based jazz musicians such as Nubya Garcia and Moses Boyd. They are the recipients of the 2023 Mercury Music Prize.
Background The members of Ezra Collective met at the jazz programme Tomorrow's Warriors, run by Gary Crosby. The jazz group has claimed that they faced challenges in succeeding as young jazz musicians in London, with Femi Koleoso saying: "I saw jazz music as an elite art form that I didn't have access to." He puts down the group's success as being able to freely express their musical influences from their youth. The band has said that Robert Glasper, and Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly provided early inspiration for their "template" as a jazz band. Career The band's 2019 instrumental single "Quest for Coin" was premiered as the "Hottest Record in The World" on Annie Mac on BBC Radio 1. In 2019, Ezra Collective released their debut LP You Can't Steal My Joy, which featured British musicians Jorja Smith and Loyle Carner. In 2022, the band released its second LP, Where I'm Meant to Be, involving a mix of both instrumental tracks and lyrical collaborations. Critical reception was widely positive, with Kate Hutchinson from The Guardian writing that the "exceptional album could be the one to cross over to the big league". On 3 March 2023, it was announced that Ezra Collective would be performing at the 2023 Glastonbury Festival. Meer... |
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On 7 September 2023, the band won the 2023 Mercury Prize for their album Where I'm Meant To Be, making them the first jazz act to win the award in its 31-year history. Following the announcement, Femi Koleoso highlighted the band's youthful origins, saying: "This moment we're celebrating right here is testimony to good, special people putting time and effort into helping young people to play music.… let's continue to support that." Alexis Petridis lauded the winning album by saying that Where I'm Meant To Be "stirs together Afro-Cuban rhythms and post-bop with rap – both Sampa the Great and 2022 Mercury nominee Kojey Radical are among the guests – dub, funk and dance music and transforms Sun Ra's Love In Outer Space into slick jazz-inflected soul with a vocal by the singer Nao, another former Mercury nominee. It's an album where the influence of spiritual jazz coexists with Afrobeat; it successfully captures the band's live energy, its kinetic power never dipping despite its 70-minute running time. It's approachable and celebratory without in any way seeming lightweight or drifting too far from the band's roots: an album that people who don't normally consider themselves jazz fans might fall for, but still resolutely a jazz album." |