Real Talk Collective:

Emily Kuhn - trumpet

Roy McGrath - tenor sax

Chris Shuttleworth - trombone

Erik Skov - guitar

Joaquin Garcia - piano

Kitt Lyles - bass

Gustavo Cortiñas - drums

Guest musicians include: Mercedes Inez Martinez - voice

Irekani Ferreyra - requinto

Yuri Hevia - bombo leguero

Join us for the release of Kitt Lyles’ second album Wake Before Dawn. Kitt Lyles is one of Chicago’s more distinctive bassists and composers. Born and raised in South Carolina, Lyles has cultivated an aesthetic that synthesizes his love for Southern roots music with imaginative contemporary jazz. Hobart Taylor of KUCI radio wrote “Composer/bassist Lyles is a sterling example of why Chicago is, in my view, the capital city of modern working jazz musicians...Chicago jazz musicians of every color and gender, whether native or drawn there by its vibrant scene, seem to make a living being true to themselves while expanding the genre via thoughtful composition and playing that celebrates artistry without hooking onto trends.”

Wake Before Dawn is Lyles’ most ambitious project to date, bringing together his band Real Talk Collective with guest musicians from Chicago’s jazz, latin, and classical music scenes, and from his hometown in South Carolina. The album is also Lyles’s debut as a songwriter/vocalist, and seeks to reach beyond jazz’s more intellectual tendencies to the organic joy and human expression found in folk music around the world. The diverse and uninhibited compositions that comprise Wake Before Dawn each explore their own imaginative space without regard to narrative structure. Taken together, the pieces form an ecosystem connecting our relationships to place, to the natural world, to each other, and to our own hearts.