Chris Coles: Nine Lives Project ft Sean Jones

Keep the excitement of the Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival going with Chris Coles’ Nine Lives Project featuring Sean Jones!

Nine Lives is an immersive musical and choreographed performance involving different mediums — including jazz, dance and animation — and reflecting on issues of social justice, racial inequality and gun violence. It is based upon the 2015 shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, in which a white supremacist killed nine Black parishioners at Emanuel AME Church.

Named one of Cleveland Magazine’s “Most Interesting People of 2021,” Chris Coles serves on the faculty of the Tri-C JazzFest Academy and Kent State University. In 2017, he was awarded a Knight Foundation Arts Challenge Grant for the Nine Lives Project. Chris is a Yamaha Performing Artist currently based out of Akron, Ohio and serves on the faculty at Oberlin Conservatory, The University of Akron and The Tri-C Creative Arts JazzFest Academy where he takes pride in bridging the gap to help the next generation of jazz giants.

Coles will be joined by trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator, and activist Sean Jones. Jones is an internationally recognized educator, currently holding the Richard and Elizabeth Case Chair of Jazz at Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Conservatory and is Artistic Director of Carnegie Hall’s NYO Jazz ensemble. Previously, Jones was Chair of the Brass Department at Berklee College of Music and served as President of the Jazz Educators Network.