In 1996, I joined two elders in my West Baltimore community as a co-founder of our nonprofit called Intersection of Change. At this point I hadn’t started performing jazz professionally yet and our community work became as important to me as music.

Over the years the level of my music started catching up to my community work and in 2017 I released an album called On These Streets: A Baltimore Story that offered a musical portrait of our neighborhood which once was the Harlem of Baltimore with historic music venues and businesses.

This album merged my music and community work and was written in response to the death of Freddie Grey whose death in police custody brought further national attention to discrepancies in racial treatment in America.  I didn’t know Freddie but he lived just a couple blocks away from my house and much of the subsequent unrest in Baltimore that spring took place in our community.

Amid the media’s focus on the challenges in our community, I felt it was relevant for myself as a musician, community activist, and resident in the neighborhood to offer a musical portrait of our community – highlighting both our strengths and challenges.

This album includes 10 original songs that portray aspects of my community and also includes six interludes that consist of community members talking about our neighborhood, sounds from the street during times of celebration or challenge, and a recreated news broadcast from the night of tragic unrest in Baltimore in 2015.

The album includes three sets of liners including remarks by sax great Gary Bartz who grew up in the neighborhood where I’ve lived now for 30 years, clarinetist Darryl Harper, and my own insights on the impact our work at my nonprofit Intersection of Change has had on our community.

Photography for the album is from the community on these streets and even included drone photography I commissioned to reflect the heart of our community’s streets.

This album is deeply personal to me for its intersection of my music and my community and I’m proud of how it features many of my Baltimore musicians along with community members whose voices are heard in the interludes.

The music for this album was premiered at a concert in my neighborhood at my nonprofit before we toured and recorded the album.  It showcases my unique work as a jazz bass clarinetist and composer and is also my only album ever to include the use of guitar and vibraphone.

This music has also been featured in the soundtrack to the 2024 documentary film Sandtown (by filmmaker Isaiah Smallman) about the neighborhood and its messages are as relevant today as when the album’s music was written over a decade ago.

And for all the artistic merits of this album, this special offer makes it available to you for free – you just cover the cost of shipping!