THOMAS SAYERS ELLIS - JAMES BRANDON LEWIS - MELANIE DYER - ALEXIS MARCELO - "The Dead Lecturers" (tribute to Basquiat)

The Dead Lecturers
"Downtown Crown in the Key of Royalty" - A Tribute to Jean-Michel Basquiat

Thomas Sayers Ellis - spoken word
James Brandon Lewis - tenor sax
Melanie Dyer - viola
Alexis Marcelo - piano

Exploring the musicality-themes, references, esoteric nuances and creative process in the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Dead Lecturers explore what it means to be a young Black Artist making his way through downtown New York City in the 1980s. In language and musical compositions that are both reflexive and improvisational, the many techniques used by the famous painter resurface in wondrous soundscapes of consciousness and rhythmic brushstrokes of painted Jazz.

The Dead Lecturers combines poetic improvisation with thought-provoking musical exploration. In "Downtown Crown in the Key of Royalty" the ensemble explores the many registers of the oral tradition within the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat, particularly the sounds of surfaces of the paintings and the way language contributes to the act of composing and conducting a new cultural music influenced by Downtown NYC in the 1980s. What does it mean to create a new literacy, a royal of the streets, in an already established and thriving art form?

Founded in 2012 by James Brandon Lewis and Thomas Sayers Ellis, three years before their larger ensemble Heroes Are Gang Leaders, The Dead Lecturers is an improvisational exchange between units of sound and units of language with the goal of stimulating, within the listener, new ideas of action and non-passive living. Ellis and Lewis have a unique chemistry of agreeing and disagreeing with one another while delivering a potent, creative messages that extend the "Black Literary Oral Tradition".