The three members of Tarbaby, pianist Orrin Evans, bassist Eric Revis, and drummer Nasheet Waits, share a long history together, dating back to well before the formation of the trio. They share core beliefs about acknowledging the over-arching tradition of the music while being true to ones own story; theyre an ensemble of serious intentions and riotous humor, fervid spirit and fierce intellect, passion and purpose. All of that melds and collides in their provocative and risk-welcoming sound.

Their most recent album, You Think This America, recorded strictly in the piano trio format without additional featured musicians, was acclaimed as the Best Jazz Album of 2024 by The New York Times.

During his kaleidoscopic quarter-century as a professional jazz musician, pianist Orrin Evans has become the model of a fiercely independent artist who pushes the envelope in all directions. Evans stylistically polyglot compositions influenced by the expansive, individuality-first Black Music culture of his native Philadelphia and by a decade playing Charles Mingus beyond-category music in the Mingus Big Band similarly postulate an environment of structured freedom that instigates the personnel to push the envelope in all his multifarious leader and collaborative projects.

Grammy Award-winning bassist and composer Eric Revis has firmly established himself as an important voice in jazz. Revis is a frequent figure on the burgeoning creative music scene in Los Angeles with ensembles such as Lancaster featuring Jeff Parker, Guillermo Brown and Joshua White. A recipient of a 2018 grant from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Revis also received the 2017 inaugural Jazz Gallery Fellowship which included a residency at the Pocantico Center of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. In 2017 Revis was named Rising Star bassist by the Downbeat Critics Poll.

Nasheet Waits drummer/music educator, is a New York native. His interest in playing the drums was encouraged by his father, legendary percussionist, Frederick Waits. Over the course of his career, Freddie Waits played with such legendary artists as Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, McCoy Tyner, and countless others. Waits has recorded and toured extensively in Africa, Europe, Japan, Canada, South America and the United States. Amidst his performing, recording and touring activity, Nasheet teaches private lessons to youth and adults, stressing a personal approach to the drums and music.

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Photo: Jimmy Katz

Nasheet Waits The Waits family lived in Westbeth Artists Housing, an artists’ community on the edge of Greenwich Village that opened in 1970 and also includes studio space and various arts institutions including the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, the avant-garde performance space the Kitchen, the Westbeth Gallery, and more. Nasheet and his brother Shareef were raised around artists of all types, but he was particularly drawn into the community of jazz drummers.

“I never even knew that these people, including my father and all the people that he was working with were like, you know, master musicians, geniuses, and innovators,” he told me recently, over Zoom from Switzerland. “I mean, they were my father’s friends, almost like family… Max Roach was like a godfather to me. I mean, I didn’t really understand the gravity of having the ability to reach out to him and him answer… and bring me into his circle until I was much older.”

Westbeth Profiles In Art Interview Nasheet Waits