KCHUNG PUBLIC: Love Song
Featuring Chief Adjuah formerly Christian Scott

Please join us for a very special performance from American cultural leader, jazz innovator, and musical pioneer Chief Adjuah, formerly Christian Scott, and his ensemble.

This program is part of KCHUNG Radio’s ongoing residency at MOCA, KCHUNG Public.

Please note that other previously scheduled performances will be rescheduled for a later date to be announced.

Chief Adjuah has been heralded as “Jazz’s young style God” (JazzTimes Magazine) and recognized for “[ushering] in a new era of jazz” (NPR). Born and raised in New Orleans, Adjuah graduated from the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts before earning a degree in Professional Music and Film Scoring from Berklee College of Music. Adjuah is a scion of New Orleans’ first family of art and culture, the Harrisons, and the grandson of legendary Big Chief, Donald Harrison Sr., who led four Black Masking Indian nations. His musical tutelage began at the age of thirteen under his uncle jazz innovator and legendary sax man, Donald Harrison, Jr. An innovative artist, Adjuah is known for his use of unique harmonic conventions and playing techniques. Adjuah is also the progenitor of “Stretch Music,” a jazz-rooted, genre-blind musical form that expands jazz to encompass multiple musical forms, languages and cultures.

Since 2002, Adjuah has released twelve critically acclaimed studio recordings, three live albums, and one greatest hits collection. The 2015 release of the recording Stretch Music marked the partnership between Adjuah’s Stretch Music record label and Ropeadope Records. In 2017, Adjuah released three albums, collectively titled The Centennial Trilogy: Ruler Rebel, Diaspora, and the Grammy-nominated Emancipation Procrastination. The trilogy’s, launch commemorated the 100th anniversary of the first known jazz recordings. The series is, at its core, a sobering re-evaluation of the social political realities of the world through sound. It speaks to a litany of issues that continue to plague the collectivehuman experience: such as slavery in the United States via the Prison Industrial Complex;, food insecurity; xenophobia; climate change; inequality based on race, gender, and sexual orientation; fascism; and the return of the demagogue.

In 2019, Adjuah released a second Grammy-nominated album, Ancestral Recall which features poet Saul Williams. Ancestral Recall sharpens and expands stretch music with a new focus on decolonizing sound. Adjuah’s 2020 release Axiom displays the artist’s live performance prowess. Axiom earned Adjuah and his stellar band more Grammy nominations, this time for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album category and for Best Improvised Jazz Solo. Adjuah has worked with many number of notable artists, including Prince, Thom Yorke, McCoy Tyner, Marcus Miller, Eddie Palmieri, rappers Yasiin Bey Talib Kweli, and Vic Mensa. Adjuah scored the Student Academy Award-nominated film Samaria and appeared on the soundtracks. He has also contributed songs for Bill and Ted Face the Music and The Photograph.

Self-governed and operated on a shoestring budget, KCHUNG Radio was formed in 2011 as an open forum of artists, musicians, writers, and philosophers. Broadcasting live on 1630 AM from a studio-in-the-sky above a pho restaurant in Los Angeles’ Chinatown, KCHUNG Radio stands apart from other local LA-based stations in its programmatically evolving nature: currently broadcasting over 40 hours weekly of original & uncensored content. With the intention to platform traditionally underrepresented voices, there are talk shows, art reviews, interviews with psychics, scientists, plant life, and ghosts, live music, dressing room gossip, surrealist meditation lessons, advice panels, and unscripted gestures of an economic or performative nature. Functioning as a framework for the expression of local artists as individual contributors, the station is an open portal, accessible to any and all interested parties. It celebrates and promotes the efforts of the dedicated amateur while remaining an autonomous entity for collective expression.

KCHUNG PUBLIC is made possible with support from Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation (EHTF)

Wonmi’s WAREHOUSE Programs is organized by Alex Sloane, Associate Curator, with Amelia Charter, Producer of Performance and Programs, Brian Dang, Programming Coordinator, and Michele Huizar, Programming Assistant.

Wonmi's WAREHOUSE Programs is founded by Wonmi & Kihong Kwon and Family.