Chief Adjuah (Formerly Christian Scott)

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While he incorporates elements of jazz, Adjuah fuses a globe-spanning palette of musical influences.

—USA Today

He’s committed to the music of New Orleans as an oral and aural, location-specific tradition—one that includes jazz but is certainly not limited to it.

—FADER

Jumps across a range of styles and sounds, channeling everything from hip hop to On the Corner-style funk and African rhythms.

—Village Voice

Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah (formerly Christian Scott) is a two-time Edison Award-winning and six-time Grammy-nominated trumpeter, composer, and producer. He is the nephew of jazz innovator and legendary sax man Donald Harrison Jr. His musical tutelage began at age 13 under the direction of his uncle. After graduating from the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts in 2001, Adjuah received a full scholarship to the Berklee College of Music, where he earned a degree in professional music and film scoring.

Since 2002, Adjuah has released 12 critically acclaimed studio recordings, three live albums and one greatest hits collection, helping to usher in a new era of jazz. Adjuah is known for developing the harmonic convention known as the “forecasting cell” and for his use of the “whisper technique,” an unvoiced tone emphasizing breath over vibration at the mouthpiece. He is also the progenitor of what he calls “stretch music,” a jazz-rooted, genre-blind musical form that attempts to stretch jazz’s rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic conventions to encompass multiple musical forms, languages, and cultures.