In collaboration with senior alto saxophone masters like Henry Threadgill and Steve Coleman Lehman has built a very solid knack of classic jazz idioms and is able to combine this with a future-oriented mindset and a propulsive musicality, which has resulted in very interesting and quaint music with different settings, including elastic and complex modern post-bop in trio format, resonant and multifaceted oktetjazz, or more recently S�l�b�yone.
Together with two rappers, Senegalese Gaston Bandimic and Hprizm (former High Priest), known from Antipop Consortium, and a great ensemble of jazz musicians in contra bassist Drew Grass (known for collaboration with Dave Douglas and Fred Hersh), longstanding Lehman drummer Damion Reid and Carlos Homs on piano and keyboards and Maciek Lassarre on soprano saxophone, Steve Lehman made one of last year's best and most groundbreaking album with music that is so much more than jazz meets hip-hop; shifting and pulsating rhythms, electro-acoustic harmonies, and a contemporary sound, with the two rappers switching between Senegalese and English �lyrics.
The album is in no way explicitly political, but the pioneering music Lehman and crew have presented in the release is still a striking proof that it is more fruitful to cross barriers than building walls. This summer Lehman will take the core of the group and present his music live during Moldejazz 2017.