Jjjjjerome Ellis

with guests TBA

at Current Space

Doors at 6pm, all ages

Vesper Sparrow opens with a declaration: “A stutter c-c-can be a musical instrument.” This was an epiphany for the Grenadian-Jamaican-American composer and artist JJJJJerome Ellis, and became the guiding principle of their work. At an early age, Ellis found liberation in the fluid sounds of the saxophone; speaking, by contrast, caused shame and discomfort. Ellis’ stutter manifests as a glottal block, an involuntary pause in their speech. Eventually, Ellis learned to see these pauses as a source of possibility. In a social context, a block can lead to confusion or embarrassment, but in a musical setting that same pause can dilate time, create moments of intimacy, and open avenues for improvisation. Now, Ellis follows their stutter like a path through the wilderness, trusting it like true intuition.

Ellis calls their glottal blocks “clearings,” as in a suddenly open space in the middle of a forest path. Historically, clearings were places where enslaved African Americans could congregate and pray. Ellis explored the complex relationships between Blackness, speech dysfluency, and music on their excellent 2021 debut The Clearing (and in a research paper of the same name). That album—didactic yet inventive, intensely emotional while remaining rigorously intellectual—was like a manuscript bursting with ideas, brought to life with hip-hop, R&B, and jazz. Vesper Sparrow, Ellis’ follow-up, is more focused but just as deep, a prose poem rather than a dissertation. Their focus now is on time: how a stutter can suspend time for both speaker and listener, and how bridging that gap can forge new connections. — Matthew Blackwell, Pitchfork (8.0)