Saxophonist and bandleader Lakecia Benjamin is the shining focal point of every stage she takes to. With her gold-colored outfits, beaming smile, rapid-fire raps and dizzying improvisations, she has been enriching the jazz world with her uplifting style of entertainment for over a decade. Wielding her usual fearless enthusiasm, the New Yorker immersed herself in the oeuvre of John and Alice Coltrane. The resulting breakthrough album Pursuance: The Coltranes (2020) confirmed what many fans have known for a long time, namely that Benjamin is one of the great sax talents of our time. According to music magazine OOR, she was one of the highlights at the 2023 NN North Sea Jazz, and blew the roof straight off the tent that year. Intense, explosive and spiritual, Benjamin won’t let anything hamper her; even a serious car accident in 2021 couldn’t stop her forward momentum. She went on to use it as inspiration for Phoenix (2023), an album that received three Grammy nominations. Benjamin pays homage to her classic jazz roots, but at the same time always has a way of injecting the genre with new energy.
