Shabaka, the artist best known for his work as the incendiary sax player and band leader of celebrated groups Sons of Kemet and The Comet Is Coming, announces his new solo album, Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace, out April 12th via Impulse!. This new work sees Shabaka primarily focus on flutes and softer woodwinds, as he shares the lead single/video, “End of Innocence,” which features Shabaka on clarinet. The piece features contributions from Jason Moran (piano), Nasheet Waits (drums), and Carlos Niño (percussion), and its Phoebe Boswell-directed video features Shabaka moving fluidly while enveloped in water as the sounds of the piece similarly wash over the listener. Additionally, Shabaka has announced a performance in Brooklyn, NY at National Sawdust on Tuesday, April 23rd. Pre-sale begins today. He will also be performing at Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN at the end of March. Of “End of Innocence,” and the album broadly, Shabaka says it “really signifies a departure for me, a departure from the bands that I’ve become known for playing in, and the arrival of the flutes in general. I bring a lot of flutes to the album and explore different kinds of sonic terrains, although for this track in particular, it’s not actually the flute, it’s the clarinet. It’s my first instrument, the instrument that I consider to be my primary instrument, so it’s really going back to what I feel most comfortable with.”
 
Having put the saxophone down and devoting his studies and energies towards the flute, Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace is, in a sense, a debut album. And yet, the album also serves as a reintroduction to the artist, a levitating, stunning work chock full of the lessons he’s learned over the course of his life and career. It represents the spirit of exploration that the artist is most tapped into these days. With contributions on the record from André 3000, Esperanza Spalding, Moses Sumney, Brandee Younger, Floating Points, Laraaji, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Saul Williams, Elucid, and more, Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace is a grand artistic statement from Shabaka, impossible to classify into genre, and bottomless in its exploratory curiosity.

Shabaka Live Dates:
Sat. March 23 – Knoxville, TN @ Big Ears Festival
Tue. April 23 – Brooklyn, NY @ National Sawdust
Fri. May 3 –  Amsterdam, NL @ Bimhaus
 Sat. May 4 – Brussels, BE @ Trocadero
Mon. May 6 – Paris, FR @ New Morning
Wed. May 8 – Berlin, DE @ Emmauskirche
Thu. May 9 – London, UK @ Barbican
Thu. May 30 – Sat. June 1 –  Barcelona, ES @ Primavera Sound
Wed. June 12 – Santa Cruz, CA @ Kuumbwa Jazz Center
Thu. June 13 – San Francisco, CA @ SFJAZZ