Virginia’s deep cultural roots run through Butcher Brown’s music. Trumpeter/saxophonist Marcus Tenney recalls long drives across the state, “soaking up the sights, the foliage,” experiences that quietly shaped the band’s sound. Bassist Andrew Randazzo agrees: “All that stuff seeps into the music.” Across 15 years, the Richmond quintet, Tenney, Randazzo, Corey Fonville, Morgan Burrs, and DJ Harrison, has merged jazz, hip-hop, soul, funk, and R&B into a lane all their own. Their newest album, Letters from the Atlantic (on Concord Jazz), plays like an East Coast travelogue, from the Chesapeake Bay to New York and down to Florida. Recorded at Spacebomb Studios with Producer Chris Dunn and engineer Alex Dejong, the project leans into house, dance, and jazz influences while highlighting a remarkable cast of guests, including Melanie Charles, Leanor Wolf, Mia Gladstone, Yaya Bey, Victoria Victoria, Nicholas Payton, and Neal Francis. From the serene opener “Seagulls” to a celestial take on Wayne Shorter’s “Infant Eyes,” the album captures Butcher Brown’s evolving, instinctive artistry honest, unforced, and distinctly their own.

Cisco Swank (Francisco Haye) is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and producer from Brooklyn, NY quickly becoming a staple in the city’s R&B, jazz, and hip-hop communities. “It’s just who he is. He is Black music. All of it. It’s in every note.” - Grammy-nominated trumpeter and collaborator Ambrose Akinmusire via The New York Times. Cisco's critically acclaimed debut solo album "More Better” is a sprawling web of jazz, hip-hop, indie, and R&B that features the likes of Laura Elliott, Ambrose Akinmusire, Luke Titus and more. Praised as “a rising multi-hyphenate” by Okayplayer & i-D, and compared to the likes of MIKE and Earl Sweatshirt by The New York Times, Cisco is cementing his status as a major player in the modern intersection of hip hop and jazz. While completing his studies at the prestigious Berklee College of Music, Cisco released the highly lauded collaborative album “Some Things Take Time” with Luke Titus in 2022 and has worked with a diverse roster of artists including Saba, Noname, Braxton Cook, Malaya, and Julius Rodriguez.