Several tunes into their powerfully transporting show at Solar Myth on Thursday night, Brandon Woody’s Upendo offered up “Never Gonna Run Away” — a trance in song form, unless it was the other way around.
Built around a short, stirring chord sequence with gospel underpinnings, the tune rolled in an unhurried triplet feel with shifty demarcations; my hasty attempt to reckon with its form subdivided a 32-beat cycle into units of six, eight, ten, and eight again. But math was the furthest thing from anybody’s mind as the musicians dug into this theme, turning each chordal repetition into a whirling eddy while Woody’s trumpet slashed forward. It was a persuasive portrait of collective abandon, teetering on the razor’s edge of sublime surrender and supreme control.
This was my first encounter with Woody, and it came with heady expectations, predicated on a bit of peer review. On a jazz-focused Year in Review episode of the New York Times Popcast in January, Marcus J. Moore and Giovanni Russonello both enthusiastically name-checked him as a talent to watch. (That moment arrives 12 minutes into the ep, in case you’d like a needle drop.) I was familiar with the name but not the music, so I took note of this endorsement, with a tiny asterisk: Woody hails from Baltimore and operates mainly there and in Washington, D.C., which Gio and Marcus both proudly consider their home turf.
Now 25, Woody has racked up a ton of experience on that regional scene — forming connections, hosting residencies, garnering accolades. In the fall of 2020, he was one of 11 photogenic young idealists featured in Calvin Klein’s “one future” campaign; the following year, he became a Bach/Conn artist. (On the Bach brass roster, alphabetized by first name, he appears between Rochester-based big band vet Bob Viavattine and Canadian hot-jazz revivalist Bria Skonberg.) But as my colleagues noted on the Popcast, there still isn’t a representative Brandon Woody track on any streaming service. You really need to go see him to check out his sound.
As I experienced it on Thursday, that sound is both dark and burnished, low-gloss, with a cutting edge that he can sharpen or dull on command. (Woody has studied a bit with Ambrose Akinmusire, and I hear a flicker of influence.) On the Popcast, Gio compares the electricity of his live show to “if you were to catch Roy Hargrove in 1989 in Greenwich Village.” Woody doesn’t really sound like Hargrove, but I understand the allusion in terms of the sheer excitement and charisma bouncing off his bandstand — especially during a fervent, incantatory solo that he fashioned over a two-bar vamp in “Score 24,” the penultimate song in Thursday’s set.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe1d1499a-daf3-4c0f-a549-12df88c967cb_4032x3024.jpeg)
A big part of that energy exchange can’t be isolated in Woody’s trumpet heroics; it has everything to do with the way that his playing is situated within the band. Upendo has been his main outlet since 2015, when he was still in high school, and in its current incarnation the band achieves a deeply impressive cohesion.
It almost feels off-base to tease apart the strands of this double helix, but every member deserves a shout here. I’ll begin with Troy Long, an essential catalyst on piano and Fender Rhodes, who laid out the harmonic framework for every song, and then helped shape its flow. Vittorio Stropoli, at a Prophet synthesizer, created both an ambient glow and a spry touch of Zawinul futurism. Michael Saunders made his electric bass an engine of emphasis, laying in the pocket but with slippery asides. And Quincy Phillips — the only one of these musicians I’d ever seen before (with Hargrove, in fact) — thrashed at his drums and cymbals with furious elation, creating overlapping rhythmic currents that, altogether, exerted a kind of centripetal force.
Besides the two tunes I’ve mentioned and “Real Love,” a cresting wave of emotional catharsis that served as a natural closer, Upendo’s set was stocked with as-yet-untitled Woody originals. Without getting mired in specifics, I’d say they shared familial traits: slow-oscillating harmonies, turbulent rhythmic undertows, melodies that skewed anthemic in their balance of drama and restraint. One of these tunes was captured by film crew at Union Stage last year with a slightly different personnel, and while the performance felt about three times more epic at Solar Myth, it’s worth sharing.
After Thursday’s set, I talked with Woody for a few minutes near the bar. The band was heading straight back to Baltimore, with a two-hour drive ahead of them, but his mood was exuberant. He confirmed something I’d just heard about Upendo’s long-awaited full-length debut: they’ll head into a studio as early as next month, under contract to a label. (I’m not at liberty to say which label. You’ll find out soon enough.)
Based on what I experienced, this album will make a considerable splash when it enters the world. Until then, get your taste of Upendo where you can. I used the word “splash” just now, which reminds me that one of the shows on their calendar this summer will be at the National Aquarium, as part of a multimedia series called Voyages. If you’re anywhere near the D.C. metro area, consider this a hot tip.
Thinking about Brandon Woody and the prospect of a breakout young jazz talent, I couldn’t help but draw a dotted line to someone else I’ve been thinking about lately: Julius Rodriguez, aka Orange Julius, a multi-instrumentalist and producer who recently released his second album for Verve. I’ve been thinking about Rodriguez in part because he’s our new guest on The Late Set, in an episode that dropped last week.
Rodriguez hails from White Plains, and has been turning heads on the New York scene since he was a middle schooler. His back story and forward pull are well articulated in this NY Times profile by Moore. In our podcast episode, taped last month, Greg Bryant and I pepper Julius with questions about genre bleed; his differing approaches in the studio and onstage; and the salutary effects of his new home base in Los Angeles. As I knew from previous conversations, he was an engaged and thoughtful interviewee. The episode also includes an exclusive taste of music that he recorded at the Notsolatin house concert series in South Philly; WRTI will premiere that concert on YouTube this Thursday, June 27 at 11 a.m. EDT.
One more thing you’ll find in the episode is a searching postgame exchange that Greg and I had about Julius’ remarkable career trajectory, and what it tells us about the atmospheric climate and current market for an emerging jazz instrumentalist. In some ways, Orange Julius is unique. In other ways, he fits a sort of profile. I actually see more than a few similarities between his aesthetic and the one that Woody has been forging for himself. There’s even a track on Rodriguez’s new album, Evergreen, that I can picture Woody easily vibing with — and not just because there’s a killer trumpeter on the track, Keyon Harrold, whose musical example is pertinent here.
Some of this is zeitgeist stuff. The sound of jazz’s contemporary Black mainstream has at least as much to do with gospel music as it does with hip-hop, probably more. (I’m thinking about brilliant young stewards like Joel Ross and Immanuel Wilkins, and the righteous fire of Lakecia Benjamin, and the cooler side of Robert Glasper, etc.)
What I find most convincing about an artist like Julius Rodriguez — or, based on my limited exposure, an artist like Brandon Woody — is the convergence of canny conceptual design with an unforced, instinctual personality. Well, that and the ability to, pardon my jargon, play their asses off. Some things never go out of style.
Woody ‘n’ View
I mentioned earlier that you won’t find any representative Brandon Woody on a streaming service. One possible exception comes on a 2021 track by the experimental British-Nigerian electronics artist Klein. According to press materials, “roc” is inspired by the Roc Nation brunch, which she once upheld in aspirational terms; “its dissonance signals the confusion that occurs when you realize that a place you’ve dreamed of is not all it’s cracked up to be.”
The scant available footage of Upendo prompts me to share generously. So in addition to the Union Stage clip embedded above, here is another untitled tune, filmed in Baltimore early in 2023. (Kayla Childs, on synths in the clip, is Philly-based, and was taking photographs at Solar Myth; here’s her Instagram.)
One more: here’s a 35-minute concert filmed under pandemic conditions in the fall of 2020, at Baltimore’s Emmanuel Episcopal Church. Vocals, by Nia June (spoken) and Lee Mo (sung), are a defining presence in this performance, which opens with the aforementioned “Never Gonna Run Away.”
Thanks as always for reading The Gig. I hope the start of summer hasn’t roasted you senseless. And wherever this finds you, I hope you’re doing some good listening.
Thanks Nate.
I found an album that Brandon is on called “Kline. harmattan” on tidal