By Robert Sutherland-Cohen***In an extraordinary program, the Jazz Generation Initiative (JGI) practically raised the roof off Brooklyn’s historic and renowned Bedford Central Presbyterian Church with their presentation of Voices of Healing & Liberation in rousing music, song and poetry, under the leadership of Program Director, Aidan Lev
y (author of the award-winning bio–Saxophone Colossus: The Life of Sonny Rollins), writer Giovanni Russonello, New York Creative Director (former critic for the NY Times), Dr. Robert O’Meally, co-Director (Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University) and Dr. Courtney Bryan, co-Director (2023 MacArthur Foundation ‘genius grant’). As emcee, O’Meally opened with remarks that JGI would be presenting music not only across generations, but… music as generative of film, dance, painting, and of the way we act and treat one another—a message sent across the five boroughs.
Those words echoed in Bryan’s solo piano performance. Her pyrotechnic piano skills spiritually lifted the audience to their feet in thunderous applause. Her piano skills and compositional talent was healing music of the highest order. With roiling crescendos she 
evoked the recently departed Reverend Jesse Jackson’s missive, “Keep Hope Alive.” Between the music in both acts, poetry and spoken word took center stage. MacArthur Fellow (2020) Fred Moten’s poetry not only resided in words, but flowed musically. Supported by the creative bass playing of Brandon Lopez they formed a synergistic musical duo. Lopez strummed, plucked, and beat on the body of his bass, while Moten equally attacked, caressed and punctuated the cadences inherent in is poetry. Poet Alexis Pauline Gumbs recited from the choir loft, with Bryan displaying organ skills, the duo gathering the audience into rapt attention.
Closing out the program’s first act was pianist-vocalist Samora Pinderhughes & the Healing Project. Pinderhughes wasbac
ked by a chorus of Brayla Cook, Nio Levon Jehbreal Muhammed Jackson, Julia Easterlin, Taj Sapp, and a rhythm section of Joshua Crumbly, electric bass; Frankie Leroux, percussion; and Brian Richburg, drums. Pinderhughes began with the striking ballad “Forgive Yourself,” delivered in sweet and sometimes keening song with the sweeping chorus of vocalists. He then plunged in rolling ostinatos backed by the rhythm section with pulse-generating speed. Changing tempos Pinderhughes turned the spotlight on each of his chorus members who soared individually with their own vocalese. Cycling through a set of original compositions, toward the end of the performance Pinderhuges offered inspiration from Harry Belafonte’s, “Black version of the national anthem,” especially poignant during Black History Month.
Act two was dominated by NEA Jazz Master pianist-vocalist Amina Claudine Myers, backed by vocalists Richarda Abrams, Luna Threadgill-Moderbacher 
and Pyeng Threadgill in her first set. Fittingly, in the gorgeous church, Myers cycled through a set of rafters-raising gospel numbers: among them “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Let My People Go” (featuring Abrams), a finger-snapping/hand-clapping “God Has Smiled on Me” and Mavis Staples’ “Love Is the Way.” In her second set, Myers seamlessly wove magic with her long-time collaborators Jerome Harris, bass and guitar and Reggie Nicholson, drums.
The Jazz Generations Initiative (JGI) is a multidisciplinary national program launched in late 2025 to bridge the jazz communities of New York City and New Orleans through intergenerational performance, scholarship and archival preservation. The nonprofit is is co-led by Bryan and O’Meally.
The evening was a powerful, vibrant demonstration of music’s power to heal.
Photos by Robert Sutherland-Cohen.
