OPENING NIGHT: Marcus Miller / Tank and the Bangas / The Soul Rebels

For the opening of our free concert series, SummerStage and long standing programming partner, Blue Note Jazz Festival, has assembled a group of performers that stretch the boundaries of jazz and funk to incorporate the wide variety of African Diaspora sounds. “Laid Black” multi-instrumentalist Marcus Miller has collaborated closely with artists who can be called legends without any hyperbole: Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Luther Vandross, Wayne Shorter, and David Sanborn– to name a few. The two-time GRAMMY winning artist’s chops are deadly serious, but he still knows how to keep it loose, counting “Da Butt,” the tongue-in-cheek anthem from Spike Lee’s School Daze, among his impressive songwriting credits. The evening also features two New Orleans-based SummerStage alumni: Tank and the Bangas, the NPR Tiny Desk contest-winning ensemble that fuses funk, soul, hip-hop, rock, and spoken-word poetry into an unforgettable performance, fresh off a GRAMMY win for leading lady Tank’s spoken word album; and The Soul Rebels, an eight-piece ensemble revolutionizing the conventional brass band framework to inject new life into sounds from across the pop spectrum.