Saxophonist Brent Birckhead to Release New Project “Exchange, Live At The Keystone Korner” on July 10th, 2026 | WATCH NEW VIDEO!

Saxophonist/Composer
Brent Birckhead to release
“Exchange, Live At The Keystone Korner”

Release Date: July 10th, 2026

There is a moment in every live performance when the music stops belonging to anyone in particular. The composer relinquishes it. The musician transmits it. The audience receives it – and in receiving it, sends something back. Art Blakey called it “split-second timing”: from the Creator, to the artist, direct to the audience. It is this theology of immediacy that animates EXCHANGE, the new live album from Brent Birckhead, captured at the iconic Keystone Korner in Baltimore.

EXCHANGE is not a document. It is a transaction. Where Birckhead’s previous albums excavated the interior life — the solitude of self-reclamation on CACAO, the bold declaration of selfhood on BIRCKHEAD – this record turns outward, insisting that music is not a solitary art but a covenant renewed in real time between musicians and the room that holds them. Each track was meticulously multitracked to preserve every texture of the performances, yet the album’s animating force is precisely what no engineering can manufacture: the unmistakable electricity of people making something together that could not have existed any other way.

EXCHANGE opens with a benediction from NEA Jazz Master and Grammy-winning producer Todd Barkan, whose introduction of Birckhead as a pillar of the music at its very best is the only credential this evening needs — and the guests Birckhead assembles prove worthy of it, each a co-author of the album’s thesis. Warren Wolf steps in first, ready to settle a debate the jazz world has long avoided. “Will the Real Kenny G Please Stand Up!!” poses the question directly: Kenny Garrett or Kenny Gorelick? Wolf’s answer, delivered with the wit and dexterity that defines his playing, is characteristically generous — each, he argues, has earned his place in the continuum. Wolf returns for a fresh modern arrangement of Paul Desmond’s “Take 5,” sung by Imani-Grace Cooper — a Howard University classmate of Birckhead’s whose ethereal execution draws visible smiles from every musician she shares a stage with — punctuated by an electrifying solo from Sean Jones, whose trumpet remains as spiritually charged as it is technically formidable. Their version doesn’t merely revisit the classic; it gives it new life entirely.

Birckhead then takes the room on an excursion with a live rendering of “CACAO,” the title track from his celebrated 2024 album, expanded here with Cooper’s voice and the electric presence of violinist Dr. Chelsey Green threading through the arrangement. Cooper steps to the fore on “For You,” a reflective song of growth and empowerment built around a lyric that doubles as a manifesto: vision starts within your mind, rearrange your thoughts and seek and you will find. Green follows with “Sound Check” — a track she literally wrote during a soundcheck before a show, creating magic out of the experience of checking levels and manipulating timbres to make the performance electrifying, and one that arrives here with the full force of her passionate and innovative command of the instrument.

“When I moved back to Baltimore, Keystone became my musical home. It was only right to record there.” – Brent Birckhead

Trumpeter Brandon Woody — Baltimore-born, and one of the most compelling voices of his generation – brings the fire on “Woody’s Interlude,” an excerpt of Birckhead’s original composition “Jacaranda” that showcases Woody’s signature laser focused chromatic lines, the kind of playing that announces a new era in the same breath it honors the old. Birckhead closes the album’s interior with “Moonlit Waters,” a sultry and seductive showcase for his bass clarinet – an instrument whose dark, enveloping register suits the late-night intimacy of Keystone Korner perfectly. The album lands with a surprise: a reimagining of SWV’s “Rain,” delivered by Cooper in her one-of-a-kind way, with something waiting at the end that the room — and the record — will not soon forget.

Together, these artists embody what Birckhead has long understood: Baltimore does not merely produce jazz musicians — it produces a particular kind of musician, shaped by community, accountability, and the knowledge that the tradition is a living obligation. EXCHANGE is both tribute and proof. You’ll find here a record that asks to be understood not track by track, but as a single sustained act of collective creation – the kind Blakey spent a lifetime insisting upon.

From the Creator. Through the musicians. Direct to you. Split-second timing.

Website: brentbirckhead.com

      

BRENT BIRCKHEAD – Alto Saxophone/Flute/ Bass/Clarinet
NOBLE JOLLEY JR. – Piano, Keyboards (3-6,8-9)
JOSÉ ANDRE – Piano, Keyboards (2,7)
ROMEIR MENDEZ – Acoustic & Electric Bass (2-3,7)
ELIOT SEPPA – Acoustic & Electric Bass (4-6,8-9)
DEVRON DENNIS – Drums
THEMBA MKHATSHWA – Aux Percussion

SPECIAL GUESTS:
BRANDON WOODY – Trumpet (7), CHELSEY GREEN – Violin (4-6,9),
IMANI GRACE-COOPER – Vocals (3-6,9),
SEAN JONES – Trumpet (3), WARREN WOLF – Vibraphone (2-3)

RECORDED BY:
Franklin Nesmith

MIXED & MASTERED BY:
Dave Darlington

Two for the Show Media