Jelani Bauman

Jelani Akil Bauman is an internationally-performing American musician, sound artist, and educator who plays with the practice and concept of lineage as a portal into past and future. Transmuting the tension between tradition and improvisation that is the philosophical foundation of Black American music, Bauman creates sound installations, original compositions, and film and podcast scores that propel his audience into a bright future made possible by merging honor for and transgression of tradition. The great-great grandson of 19th-century cornetist and music educator Professor J.B. Humphrey and grandson of Emery Humphrey Thompson, also known as Umar Sharif, who performed with  such musicians as Ella Fitzgerald, Fletcher Henderson, and Lionel Hampton, Bauman began his  classical training at age 13 with the trumpet, under the tutelage of Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra’s Ronald Benko. He studied with Alvin Batiste (Cannonball Adderley, Billy Cobham, Wynton Marsalis) at the renowned New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) before  completing his B.M. at Berklee College of Music and a master’s of music in jazz studies at Michigan State University. This artistic genealogy has equipped Bauman to carve a singularly  contemporary sound.  

Bauman has performed and presented at venues, festivals, and museums in Europe, the Middle  East, and North and South America, including the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the Brooklyn  Museum, the Domaine Forget Jazz Festival in Quebec, the Detroit International Jazz Festival,  Jazz a la Calle in Uruguay, the Jazz Standard in New York City, Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and St. Regis Hotel in Doha, Qatar. He is a  recipient of a National Foundation in the Advancement for the Arts Regional Award for Jazz Trumpeter in the State of New York and an alumnus of the Banff Centre Jazz Workshop.