Toshi Reagon & BIGLovely
TOSHI REAGON (Singer, Composer, Musician, Curator, Producer) is a multi-talented and versatile singer, composer, musician, with a profound ear for sonic Americana—from folk to funk, from blues to rock. While her expansive career has landed her at Carnegie Hall, the Paris Opera House and Madison Square Garden, you can just as easily find Toshi turning out at a music festival, intimate venue or local club.
She has collaborated with many artists including Lizz Wright, Meshell Ndegeocello,Jason Moran, Alicia Hall Moran, Climbing PoeTree and Nona Hendryx. Toshi collaborated with tap dancer Michelle Dorrance and Dorrance Dance to create the Bessie Award-winning The Blues Project and is a composer and performer in Meshell Ndegeocello’s Can I Get A Witness: The Gospel of James Baldwin.
One of her most significant collaborators is her mother, Bernice Johnson Reagon. Together, they created two operas with director Robert Wilson, The Temptation of St. Anthony and Zinnias, The Life of Clementine Hunter. Inspired by the visionary and prescient story telling of Octavia E. Butler, Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon created the opera Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower.
Toshi Reagon is also a well-regarded curator and presenter. From 2011 to 2015 Toshi was the curator for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Women’s Jazz Festival and has an ongoing relationship with Joe’s Pub in New York City to curate the GOODFolk series. In 2019 Toshi presented Soul Mechanism as part of Carnegie Hall’s Migrations Festival.
Toshi co-composed music for two Peabody Award-winning films and received a NYFA Award for Music Composition, the 2010, an OutMusic Heritage Award and The Black Lily Music and Film Festival Award for Outstanding Performance. She is a National Women’s History Month honoree and was named a 2015 Art of Change Fellow by the Ford Foundation. She is an Andrew W. Melon DisTil Fellow with Carolina Performing Arts, a 2018 United States Artist Fellow, and an Andrew W. Melon Creative Futures Fellow Carolina Performing Arts 2018-2022. Toshi Reagon is Emerson College’s current artist-in-residence through June 2021, funded by the Fresh Sound Foundation and the Doris Duke Foundation.
Toshi resides in Brooklyn NY. From there she continues to tour as a solo artist and with her band Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely. She founded WORD*ROCK*&SWORD: A Festival Exploration of Women's Lives, community festival that takes place throughout New York City every September since 2011. Through her company Wise Reagon Arts she curates and produces several events a year with the intention of creating congregational spaces.
Her many recordings include The Righteous Ones, TOSHI, Have You Heard, There and Back Again and SPIRITLAND. Her latest record Beautiful World will be released fall 2021.
Featuring
Carla Duren, Vocals
Ganessa James, Bass
Kim Jordan, Keys
Allison Miller, Drums
Josette Newsam, Vocals
Ann Klein, Guitar
Photo Credit: Flora Hanitijo
CALENDAR.
Pricing
$10 - $35
Tickets for our Tuesday shows will be available for $10 from October - December, 2021. There is a 2 ticket maximum per person, per $10 ticket. Additional tickets may be purchased at full price.
Doors Open
7PM