In his second film with Stanford Live, Bay Area jazz composer and educator Marcus Shelby performs excerpts from his evening-length suite Harriet Tubman. Originally written for the Marcus Shelby Big Band, the project is part of a series of extended works Shelby has composed to explore the Black freedom struggle through jazz. Shelby mixes original compositions with spirituals of Tubman’s era arranged in a contemporary jazz language, with the music telling Tubman’s story as a historical epic that can be felt vividly in the present moment.

Preview


⟵ Back to Films, Screenings, & More