First Monday Jazz with Alexis Lombre

First Monday Jazz with Alexis Lombre

To celebrate 10 years of First Monday Jazz, Arts + Public Life audiences will be treated to a year of live jazz performances.

ALEXIS LOMBRE is a pianist, vocalist, composer and AACM member from Chicago who discovered early that the true essence of music is not just about what you hear but how music makes you feel. Lombre is an inaugural New Music USA Next Jazz Legacy Awardee. Her musical mission is to keep the ‘Soul’ in music alive. The 2017 release of her debut album, “Southside Sounds”, does just that, as it is a soulful straight-ahead reflection of her upbringing on Chicago’s Southside. This collection of her original compositions is an attempt to pay homage to the Southside’s lively artistic, cultural heritage influenced by Eddie Harris & Gene Ammons. In 2021, Lombre released her most recent single “Come Find Me” which she describes as “lyrically, a gospel song; harmonically, a jazz song and rhythmically, a hip-hop/R&B song. I didn’t create the song with any borders”. As JazzTimes puts it “Lombre says she realized early on that by refusing to be constrained by convention— whether so-called “jazz” or otherwise—she’d be honoring, rather than defiling, the rich heritage she’d come to embrace.”

She has performed and/or recorded with internationally known musicians such as: Marcus Miller, Nicole Mitchell, Faith Evans, Donald Harrison, Bobby Watson, Buster Williams, Wadada Leo Smith, Too $hort, Jamila Woods, J Moss, DJ Dnice, Rudresh Mahanthappa, and Nona Hendrix. Lombre has been featured in JazzTimes, the Chicago Tribune, the Detroit Metro Times and Vocalo.