Harlem Jazz Series - Craig Harris & the Harlem Nightsongs Big Band

The Harlem Jazz Series presents trombonist and composer Craig Harris with the Harlem Nightsongs Big Band, his large-ensemble project. Harris leads a program built around his own compositions and arrangements, where conducted passages meet improvisation. The project has also been associated with spoken word and visual elements engaging Harlem’s past and present. This performance takes place in the resonant sanctuary of Mount Morris Ascension Presbyterian Church, the longtime home of Harris’s Harlem series.

Born in Hempstead, New York, Harris is a longtime Harlem-based artist and concert curator whose adventurous, socially engaged compositions have addressed Harlem history and social injustice. He has worked with Sun Ra, Abdullah Ibrahim, David Murray, Lester Bowie, Cecil Taylor, Sam Rivers, Muhal Richard Abrams and Charlie Haden, and co-composed the score for Judas and the Black Messiah with Mark Isham. Reviewing the big band in 2025, Amsterdam News found it “in full swing,” with musicians stretching out in “expressive solos,” adding, “There is feeling in the music.” The New York Times praised an earlier Harlem Night Song for its “propulsive, unpredictable mix” of ensembles and solos, culminating when “the whole band roared.”