Friday, May 29th at Tonal Park Studios at 7014-C Westmoreland Ave, Takoma Park, MD. Doors at 7:00. Music at 7:30. Admission $20. Advance tickets.
Join us for a concert featuring DC-area drummer Keith Butler, Jr. with his ensemble, saysew, celebrating the release of their new recording King of Tobaccoville.
Keith Butler Jr. (drums/composition/lyrics), Alex Hamburger (flute), Drew Kid (piano), Steve Arnold (bass), and Jaquay Smith (vocals).
seysew ("say so") was formed by Keith Butler Jr. around 2023. After completing his MFA in composition at Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2022, Keith thought to expand his compositional framework from the trio format to a larger group with voice and lyrics. seysew is an exploration of that group, as well as friendship, family and community.
King of Tobaccoville, Keith's first album with seysew is the studio version of a commissioned piece entitled Rest/Imagine: Themes for a Bloodline. In 2024 Keith was commissioned by Little City Concerts of Falls Church, VA to complete and perform a new work. The new work focused on themes of literacy, coming of age in the south, ancestry, creative freedom, and the power of the Black imagination. King of Tobaccoville will be released in May 2026.
Keith Butler Jr. is a Washington, DC based multidisciplinary artist. He completed his MFA in Music Composition at Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2022 with a focus in lyrical piano music and modern art song. As a drummer he works regularly with the area’s top musicians and bands such as Grant Langford. Stephen Arnold & Sea Change, FIASCO, Abe Mamet, Colin Chambers, Bēheld, Brian Settles, Alex Hamburger, Elijah Jamal Balbed, Zoë Jorgenson, and Amy K. Bormet. He leads his own group, seysew, and is a Little City Concerts 2024-25 commissioned artist.
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For the last decade, flutist, vocalist and composer Alex Hamburger has been creating her own musical direction. Raised in Silver Spring Maryland within the DC music scene by a family of accomplished artists, her passion for music ignited at a young age. After some time in New York and studying in prestigious institutions in New York and Switzerland, Alex returned to DC with a renewed sense of purpose.
Alex's highly anticipated sophomore album, What If? (Unit Records, June 29th, 2023), delves into perception, transition, and the boundaries of human experience. The album fuses electric and acoustic sounds for an immersive narrative that continues to stir up glowing testimonials from publications such as All About Jazz, Jazzthing, Vents Magazine and Bandcamp.
Her debut album, And She Spoke (November 2021), explores the diverse concept of the female voice through original compositions based on poetry by female poets and personalized arrangements of compositions by female composers.
Alex was also a member of the esteemed Focusyear band at JazzCampus in Basel Switzerland in 2018/19 where she had the privilege of studying and performing for a year with the prestigious international ensemble that released the album Open Paths on Neuklang records. Alex has also been awarded grants from organizations such as South Arts Jazz Roads, Chamber Music America and Pathways to Jazz to help fund her recording and touring endeavors.
Alex's journeys abroad have ignited the flame for her to continue captivating audiences worldwide with her internationally acclaimed performances as she continues to tour around the world, having so far toured around Europe, South America and the US with her project. As well as playing and touring with her own projects, she remains an important member of many other touring and recording ensembles such as Origem, Lucas Ashby’s Brain Trust, Abe Mamet’s Sextet and Biomorphic Forms and pop groups like Bright Eyes. She is an integral member of José Luiz Martins’ quartet, producing their 2025 album “Oddessy Mixtape” which garnered reviews from publications like Downbeat, Modern Drummer and was named one of CapitalBop’s top 5 albums of the year. The group also was named the winners of the DCJazzPrixx, a prestigious competition held by the DCJazz Festival.
While captivating audiences worldwide, Alex remains deeply connected to the DC music community. She was a member of the 2022 Strathmore Artist in Residence class and a multiple time Wammie awards nominee. Alex actively contributes to her hometown's musical landscape as the producer and founder of the successful My Body, My Festival; a fundraiser for the DC Abortion Fund as well as serving as Managing Director of CapitalBop, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting, preserving and presenting Jazz in DC.
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Drew Kid (Andrew Cerafica) is a Filipino-American piano player, composer, arranger, producer, painter, and survivor of abuse/suicide from Silver Spring, Maryland.
He has three full-length album releases to his name, 2015’s Rebirth (*listed as Oooh Child Ensemble), 2018’s For You, For Me Too and 2023’s THE LOOP EVOLVES.
Amassing an ever-growing discography of album credits and co-productions, with a natural gift for collaboration, he has contributed countlessly to the work of artists in the DMV area and around the country since 2009. Some notable credits include yU’s The Earn, The 1978ers’ People of Today, and executively producing Cecily’s Awakening, Pt. II.
Drew’s latest work takes form in a new band, BADDIE $QUAD UNITED, a funk-jazz unit believing in the healing power of art, with a mission of reigniting patience in the world. Joined by fellow genius composer friends William Carr on synthesizer and vocals, Malik Hunter on bass, and Nom on drums, B$U holds an unfair musical advantage against the klout-infested evils of the universe.
Outside of his own bands, Drew has performed as a member of the Capital Focus Jazz Band, Thad Wilson Jazz Orchestra, Joe Brotherton Quintet, Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra, and was an Artist-in-Residence at Strathmore. He has performed with jazz legends Butch Warren and Dick Hyman. He currently performs as the keyboardist for Kokayi, and played piano/synthesizer on the latest release, “Kokayi - Live at Big Ears” (2025), capturing the group’s dynamic set at the eclectic Tennessee festival. The release has been submitted for consideration of Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Jazz Album.
As a member of CFJB, Drew spent 10 years traveling and performing – in St. Louis for the first Jazz Education Network conference, tours of Spain, Toronto, the Jazz Fest at Sea on the Caribbean, Satchmo SummerFest in New Orleans, Chestertown Jazz Festival, and others.
Drew has been blessed to study music from a myriad of incredible musicians including Nena Balaan, Marian Balaan, Kenneth Hammann, Colin Crawford, Wade Beach, Kenny Rittenhouse, Tyler Kuebler, Dave Robinson, Robert Landham, yU, Slimkat78, Andrew Smith, Alex Brown, Dre King, Becca Stevens, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, and many others. He earned a bachelor’s degree in performance from George Mason University in 2015.
His music has been featured on Okayplayer, Bandcamp Weekly, CapitalBop, Music Letter (Italy), and the Washington City Paper. Karas Lamb, for Okayplayer, wrote of Drew’s first solo record For You, For Me Too, “...a headphone masterpiece…The deeply personal fourteen track project boasts features from Deborah Bond, Grap Luva, yU, Kev Brown, and Big Rube.”
In 2022, Drew joined Filipino-American film group Barkada DMV and composed his first short film scores as well as contributing as an actor and writer.
He is currently at work on his third solo album and, in the quiet moments, paints watercolor for art therapy.
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Stephen Arnold is a bassist and composer from Greenfield, Massachusetts and based in Washington, DC. A pianist from a young age, Arnold picked up the upright bass at the George Washington University, where he studied with Herman Burney, Jr. Shortly after college he was selected to participate in the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program at the Kennedy Center under the direction of Jason Moran. Arnold contributes to projects by a wide variety of artists including Fran Vielma, Sharón Clark, Todd Marcus, Brandon Woody, and ¡FIASCO! and has performed at many great venues, such as the Library of Congress, the Kennedy Center, Blues Alley, and the Howard Theater.
Arnold's band Sea Change has released two acclaimed albums of original compositions, with the most recent, Until Now, having been voted Capitalbop’s #2 DC Jazz Album of 2023. Sea Change has been featured in venues such as the 2024 DC Jazz Festival, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Gaithersburg Arts Barn, the Bop Stop at the Music Settlement, Maryland Hall, and An Die Musik, with a new album currently in the works for 2026.
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A Jamaican-American from Prince George's County, Maryland with a passion for God and music, Jaquay Smith (JAQ) is a storyteller, wrapping big ideas and concepts into small bite-sized packages. Her stories are imaginative, bringing ideas and inspiration from her personal Faith, traditions, family, and nature. Her music merges multiple genres (musical theatre, classical, folk, gospel, and jazz) to create a music style of her own. From Music Matters with JAQ content and choral music to books and singer-songwriter tunes, Jaquay's goal is to use multiple mediums to spread the love of Jesus to every soul on the planet.
Smith holds a BA in Economics from University of Maryland College Park and a MFA in Music Composition from Vermont College of Fine Arts. When she isn't working on her own projects, you can find her singing with local churches, choirs, artists, and composers, hiking with her dog, Gizmo, sipping on ginger tea, reading a book, or watching Sci-Fi and Fantasy films.