About this Show:
21+. 9pm.

Debut performance of a new collaboration between Devon Gates (bass, vocals), Fay Victor (vocals), Shanta Nurullah (sitar), and Lily Finnegan (drums). Bringing together musicians from three different cities including New York City, Boston and Chicago. Featuring new compositions and improvisations inspired by the Black feminist tradition.

Fay Victor
Brooklyn, NY based sound artist/composer Fay Victor hones a unique vision for the vocal role in jazz and improvised music regarding repertoire, improvisation and composition. Victor has an ‘everything is everything’ aesthetic, using the freedom in the moment to inform the appropriate musical response, viewing the vocal instrument as full of possibilities for sound exploration, a throughline for direct messages in an improvising context. Victor embraces all of these ideas in real time and on Victor’s 11 critically acclaimed albums as a leader one can hear the evolution of this expansive expression.

Devon Gates
Devon Gates is a bassist, vocalist, composer and improviser from Atlanta, Georgia. Through studying anthropology and jazz performance at Harvard University and Berklee College, she has worked with Terri Lyne Carrington, Linda May Han Oh, Vijay Iyer, Danilo Perez, Claire Chase, and esperanza spalding, and has performed with Social Science, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Susie Ibarra, Michael Mayo, and Tia Fuller. Most recently, her original "Don't Wait" was published in Berklee Press' "New Standards" collection. She is a Mutual Mentorship for Musicians fellow, and has performed at Joe's Pub, the Monterey Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, Winter JazzFest, and SFJazz.

Shanta Nurullah
Shanta Nurullah was born into a musical family and studied piano and tap dancing throughout her formative years. While in college, she was able to travel to India and study Indian Classical music and the sitar. Shanta has been performing professionally as a musician since 1972, and as a storyteller since 1978. After college, Shanta immersed herself in the Black Arts Movement as a member of the Kuumba Workshop, Kelan Phil Cohran’s Black Music Workshop, and associating with writers, visual artists, dancers, and members of the AACM.

Lily Finnegan
Lily Glick Finnegan is a Chicago born and based drummer, composer and improviser. In 2021 she earned a Master of Music from Berklee College of Music in Boston Massachusetts. She received a full scholarship to participate in the Berklee Global Jazz Institute, a 20-person international cadre of musicians led by Danilo Perez. At Berklee she was also part of the Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice. Here she was mentored by Terri Lyne Carrington, Kris Davis, and Linda May Han Oh. She’s worked on projects with Carrington including Music for Abolition as part of the Visualizing Abolition Exhibit at University of California Santa Cruz. Her thesis project was entitled “Music and Abolition: Creating a World Without Policing- Music’s Role in Imagination, Experimentation, and Collectivity”. Prior, she completed a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2020, majoring in sociology and music. This fueled her interest in studying the confluence between power structures, history, and social movements with music.