On Grammy Sunday, February 1st, in Murphy Recital Hall at LMU, the non-profit Just Jazz Foundation offered a glimpse into the future of jazz with the Future Is Now Concert Series.

"We Do This to Express Something", Kicking Off The Future Is Now Concert Series

On Grammy Weekend, when the music industry's spotlight turned to Los Angeles, a different kind of showcase unfolded at Loyola Marymount University's Murphy Recital Hall. The Just Jazz Foundation presented the Future Is Now Concert Series, featuring the Jahari Stampley Family Trio alongside a collective of young musicians by the name of Sumbocalasque.

The group, composed of high school and college students from across Los Angeles, represents something vital in the city's jazz ecosystem. They're friends first, bandmates second, and together they're carving out a space where the traditions of jazz meet the instincts of a generation that refuses to be boxed in. Four members sat down to discuss their musical journeys, the Just Jazz community that's nurtured them, and what it means to be the future of this music on a weekend that celebrates its past and present.

Each member of Sumbocalasque arrived at jazz through a different door, but none of them describe it as a dutiful inheritance. For trumpeter Te'A Lucasan, the inspiration came from iconic voices: Roy Hargrove, Miles Davis, Chet Baker. But the path forward is distinctly her own.

Pianist Luca Zamora approaches the music with refreshing honesty. When asked about his compositional process, he admits he doesn't lean heavily on theory. Music, for him, is "all instinct." His heroes? McCoy Tyner and Tony Cioria.

Sydney DeFranco, the group's vocalist and a student at USC Thornton, draws from an unexpectedly wide well. Yes, there's Nina Simone and Betty Carter. But she's just as likely to be listening to Björk, FKA Twigs, indie folk artists like Adrienne Lenker and Boygenius, or the 90s rock of Fiona Apple and Tori Amos that filled her childhood home. This eclectic diet shapes how she approaches her role in an instrumental-heavy collective.

"In jazz, which is very heavily based on instrumental music, I see my role as a vocalist to just serve as my own instrument," DeFranco explains. "There's a lot of discourse on how to best serve jazz music as a vocalist. For me, my journey was to see it from an instrumentalist standpoint."

That means wordless singing, weaving in and out of horn lines, functioning as another texture. When she's not doing that, when she steps into a more traditional vocalist role, that's when interpretation, phrasing, and emotional arc take center stage. 

For drummer and bandleader Eli Boreth, Sumbocalasque wasn't a calculated move. It was organic, a gathering of "friends of friends of friends" that slowly cohered into something intentional. When asked why this kind of collective was needed in LA, he pauses.

"I don't really know if that's something I thought about very much as a necessity," he admits. "But thinking back, there really haven't been a lot of other things like it. So it is definitely one of a kind."

Ask any of them about the difference between playing in Los Angeles versus other jazz hubs, and a clear picture emerges. Te'A puts it simply: "LA is very chill." She contrasts the city with New York, based on her first-hand experience exploring the different music hubs, where the jazz scene can feel "very straight ahead, old school." 

In LA, the approach is different. "What we're doing here is a lot of modern jazz. I think LA is very modern with the jazz scene."

That modernity shows up in the music Sumbocalasque performs, a blend of traditional jazz elements with global influences, funk, and the easygoing pulse of a city that prizes groove as much as complexity. Luca, speaking about the Just Jazz student jams, notes that playing with musicians at or above his level "keeps my ears sharp." It's a different kind of education than what happens in a practice room. "The student jams," he says, "really shape up your ear and all your instincts."

Eli agrees, emphasizing the spontaneity of those sessions. "You show up, maybe you watch the house band play a set. Maybe you don't. Then you get called up, pick a tune, and just play. A lot of times in academic settings, there's much more rehearsing. Being able to get on a bandstand with people you don't know and create something in the spur of the moment is super important."

Te'A's face lights up when she recalls the first Just Jazz concert she attended as a guest of Just Jazz’s Rebecca Hogan and LeRoy Downs. She was in high school, attending a Keyon Harrold show at the Jazz Bakery, probably the youngest and only student there with her parents. Although she was shy, Hogan and Downs introduced her to the acclaimed trumpeter.

"He remembered me," she says, still with some wonder. "The next year, I went to someone else's show at the Hollywood Bowl, and he was there, and he remembered me. I was like, 'Oh my gosh, that was a year ago.' He said, 'Yeah, I'm always tapped in with Just Jazz.'"

That moment encapsulates what makes the foundation's approach different. It's not transactional. It's relational. Just Jazz makes it a point to carefully choose musicians to pair these students with. Every opportunity is a seed that, with the right nurturing, will bloom into a lifelong connection.

"Just Jazz always finds a way to keep their students involved," Te'A continues. "They always give us tickets to the Blue Note to see people. We get to meet these musicians who remember our faces, and then you make a connection on social media and in person. It's a huge blessing."

Luca names a specific Blue Note memory: seeing Cory Henry adapt to the rock and roll world of Marcus King. "It was amazing seeing a modern jazz player being able to adapt to that kind of sound."

For Eli, one of the earliest and most formative experiences was joining LeRoy Downs on his KCRW show for an interview with Chief Adjuah (formerly Christian Scott). "He's incredibly smart, so knowledgeable about the history of this music. But at the same time, he's just kind of another guy. That's my biggest takeaway, these legends are pretty much normal people. They're willing to share, and they want to keep the music going."

When Te'A talks about her connection with trumpeter Tatiana Tate (who served as Special Guest Mentor for the Future Is Now concert) the lines between teacher, mentor, and friend blur beautifully.

"I remember getting my lessons with her through Just Jazz," Te'A says. "It started off as a mentorship, and she would always reach out and ask how I was doing. Then it became more of a friendship through music. She's a lot of steps ahead of me, but she's always giving me advice, especially with being a woman in the music industry. I'm always able to call her when I need advice, whether it's about music or something in my life."

Sydney shares a similar story about Syndee Winters. A lunch conversation over the summer became a turning point. 

"She was telling me to be on the scene," Sydney recalls. "How important it is to just be out there. Go to the jam sessions, meet the people, see your friends' shows. That was something she affirmed, something I already believed, but it was a reminder to keep going."

Then Winters offered something Sydney carries with her daily: "She said that as a vocalist and as a woman in the jazz world, it's really easy to feel lesser than the instrumentalists. They might treat you like you don't know anything, like you haven't done the work. It's important not to listen to those voices and to keep doing your own thing."

That attitude, Sydney says, has been essential in her USC Thornton jazz elements class, where she's the only vocalist and the only woman. "Having the attitude of 'No, I belong here'. That's the main point."

Ask Te'A about the Just Jazz student jams, and one word comes immediately: "Family. Everybody knows each other, or at least knows of each other," she explains. 

"When you see each other in person, it's like, 'Oh, cool.' You can hear who they are through their playing. It's cool to be able to communicate with them outside of playing, and then while we're jamming, get to see the vibe of who our true family is in the music scene."

For Eli, the jams offer something academic settings rarely can: the chance to fail and recover in real time, with seasoned mentors nearby to guide. "They not only create a place for it to happen, but they also put a mentor there, someone who really knows what they're doing and knows how to lead it. That's really amazing."

Perhaps the most profound impact of the Just Jazz ecosystem is invisible to outsiders but felt deeply by these young artists. Eli names it directly. "One of my biggest takeaways has been confidence in myself as a musician," he says. "It's really made it feel possible to be a musician. In a place like LA, that's super important. It's such a huge scene, it can feel easy to just fade away. But with Just Jazz, it really feels like I'm in a super special place."

Te'A echoes this, pointing to the foundation's consistent presence. "They email each student, and we get so many options [concerts and events] to just pick from. Jazz music in general is just a solid foundation for every musician to have. With Just Jazz, you're able to build these connections when you're a 'nobody.' And then once you start putting your own stuff out there, you'll have support to back you up. They're a family that consistently shows up for you."

For all the talk of community, these are serious musicians deeply engaged with their craft. Sydney, in particular, speaks with precision about how her Thornton training feeds into her work with Sumbocalasque.

"The piece that I brought to the performance on Sunday was something I arranged in Thornton for a combo I was in last year," she explains. "The skills I now have, to be able to arrange, are attributed to my own listening and work, but very largely also to what I've learned in my classes."

She describes big band arranging classes, combos that require original compositions, theory courses, and "jazz elements,” a kind of summation of everything a Thornton musician is expected to know. The growth is measurable. "I was looking at my work from even just a year ago and comparing it to what I've done recently. I can assess what I've improved on, what my previous work was lacking, and how I directly learned to overcome that with specific classes."

Luca, despite his instinct-based approach, is thinking deeply about the future of his instrument. When asked about the role of the keyboardist in the next wave of jazz, his answer is unexpectedly existential.

"The rise of AI has definitely been scary," he admits. "To think that you can easily be replaced by a technology that already genre bends…it could probably create a new genre in the next few years. You need to be able to think and adapt to that." Pressed on how he's adapting, he points to the intangibles: the things absorbed through years of listening, playing, and being in rooms with musicians who push him.

The concert series has a name that could feel like pressure. But for these four, it feels like permission.

"I think it's much more stepping into our own space," Eli says firmly. "Because that's really what it's about, creating a space for the future of jazz, rather than trying to funnel it into a certain lane."

He sees the future of jazz as a continuation of what jazz has always been: "Whatever the musicians make it. It's never been commercialized. There's never been a set goal for what jazz is gonna sound like. It'll just be whatever it turns out to be, whatever people make it. I think that's kind of beautiful."

Sydney is more pointed about the directions she hopes to see jazz go. She's watching the genre bleed into hip hop, R&B, and beyond. "I think that's what I like to see in jazz right now, music being beyond category."

But she also sees a deeper purpose. Reflecting on the Fables of Faubus and jazz's history of political resistance, she adds, "One direction I'd be very excited to see jazz continue to go in is as a form of resistance, especially with the current climate in America right now. I think we could use some of that. I'd be really excited to see my peers continue the tradition of resistance in jazz."

For Te'A, the future includes production. "I want to be more on the production side and produce my own music, whether it's jazz or not." The foundation, she says, has given her the connections and support to make that leap when she's ready.

When asked what they hope the audience at Murphy Recital Hall takes away from their performance, each answer reveals something essential about the artist.

Luca, with his dry humor, deadpans: "Listen to real instruments." It's a joke, but it lands. A gentle reminder that what they do is live, human, and irreplaceable.

Sydney is more lyrical, "When I'm singing, my hope is for the audience to feel like the music is taking them somewhere new. Someplace where it's just you."

Te'A thinks about the atmosphere on stage. "It's more just us having fun, rather than being all serious. Nowadays, I feel like jazz has been taken, especially with young musicians, so serious on stage. We all need to remember where we're coming from. We do this for fun, and we're doing this to express something."

Eli's answer is the most expansive, tying the concert's theme to the wider world.

"Optimism," he says. "The whole point of this concert series is that the future is now. Especially in this current state of the world, things can feel really hopeless. Music is a really beautiful way to change that mindset. That's a beautiful thing about this series, it's really about the future, and that can be a bleak thing to think about. But creating this music and being on stage with these incredible musicians makes it feel like, whatever else happens, at least the music will be there."

As the conversation winds down, Eli offers one final thought, a summary that could serve as a mission statement for both Sumbocalasque and the Just Jazz Foundation.

"I just think it's a really incredible thing that there are so many young people who are so interested and devoted to this music," he says. "That there is a community outside of classical jazz, whatever that means. There's actually a community of young people trying to push the music forward. And I really think it's important and amazing that Just Jazz is pushing that forward rather than trying to stay in the past."

Jahari Stampley Family Trio Special Guest Performance with Nicolaus Gelin & Skylar Tang

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovLnjbkJzac

Just Jazz Foundation is a non-profit 501c3. Click the image below to make your tax deductible donation today to support these students and the future of jazz music.