Too Late To Quit: A Newsletter
Welcome all, to my first ever newsletter! At the request of family members who don’t use social media, and in the spirit of not giving away my soul completely to Meta, I’m compiling a list of upcoming performances and creative endeavours to keep my rabid fans at bay

Here are some highlights from my performance schedule this spring.

Saturday 4/18, 11:55 pm


Solo Piano at Mezzrow

I’ve been playing at Mezzrow as a sideman consistently since 2017, but only started playing there as a bandleader in the past year. This will be my fourth time playing the “round midnight” solo piano sets, which I’ve used as an opportunity to showcase repertoire I’ve been preparing for the Mark Morris Dance Group. I’ll be playing Gershwin’s “Three Preludes”, Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s “Grand Tarentelle” and  “You’ve Got To Be Modernistic,” a suite of 8 compositions by James P. Johnson arranged by Ethan Iverson. Since James P. Johnson’s portrait hangs above the piano at Mezzrow, I can think of no better place to perform the music of the first jazz pianist.

Sunday 4/19 7 pm
Aubrey Johnson Sextet Album Release Soapbox Gallery

I’ve been playing in vocalist Aubrey Johnson’s sextet since 2022, and it’s wonderful to see her latest album The Lively Air receiving rave reviews since its debut a month ago. This is a rare chance to hear the music from the album at an intimate venue in downtown Brooklyn, and it’s free and family friendly! Buy the album here.

Aubrey Johnson - vocals & compositions
Alex LoRe- woodwinds
Tomoko Omura - violin
Kelsey Mines - bass
Jay Sawyer - Drums

Monday 4/20 9 pm
Giuseppe Cucchiara Quartet
Ornithology
It’s no small feat to have a working band in New York, let alone one with the same players every gig. This quartet has played every third Monday of the month at Ornithology for over 4 years. We have two records out: Music For Your Soul, (a live album recorded at this residency), and First Book Done, featuring vibraphonist Simon Moullier. This band will also be in Washington DC at Blues Alley June 2nd.

Ben Solomon - tenor sax 
Adam Arruda - drums
Giuseppe Cucchiara - bass and compositions

Friday-Sunday 4/24-4/26
Jonathan Barber’s Vision Ahead
JazzCultural
JazzCultural just opened a few weeks ago, and with its spacious interior and world class acoustics, it is already one of my favorite places in New York to hear music. I’m looking forward to this three night residency with the amazing drummer Jonathan Barber. Last year, the same band from this residency went into the studio to record guitarist Tony Davis’s album Jessamine. Almost exactly a year later, we are going back to the same studio (Ghost Hit Recording in Springfield MA) to record Barber’s new album the day after this residency ends. This is how they did it back in the day: play six sets of new original music, then record for two days immediately after! I’m excited to see how the music evolves through this process.
Tickets are available now.

Matt Knoegel - tenor sax
Tony Davis - guitar
Matt Dwonyzk - bass
Jonathan Barber - drums and compositions

May 7th-9th:
Mark Morris Dance Group
Meany Center for the Performing Arts, Seattle WA
I began touring with the Mark Morris Dance Group in January 2024, and I’m very excited to be coming home to Seattle for the first time with the group. We will be performing a program featuring the repertoire of Gershwin, Johnson and Gottschalk that I’ve been playing in my Mezzrow solo sets. I will also be making my hand percussion/gong debut (!) on the apropos new dance Northwest. The program is easily the hardest night of music I’ve ever had to perform, but it’s always a rewarding experience working with dancers of the highest caliber. 
Tickets are available now, but I hear it’s close to selling out.

May 14th-18th
Chris McCarthy Quintet @ Black Cat, San Francisco CA
My quintet will be playing our third annual residency at Black Cat in a few weeks. The norm in jazz used to be multi-week engagements for working bands, but now it’s incredibly rare to present your original music four nights in a row with the same band. Repertoire will be featured from my records Still Time To Quit (2020), Add a Zero (2025) and my upcoming project Too Late To Quit (2026). 
Tickets are available now!

Takuya Kuroda - trumpet
Eden Bareket - bari sax
Sam Minaie - bass
Steven Crammer - drums

May 22nd
First single from Too Late To Quit: “As If”
In January, I recorded my fifth album as a leader with my working quintet. The album features 8 originals, half of them featuring my long time collaborator Vanisha Gould on vocals. The release of the album on September 18th coincides with my 10 year anniversary of moving to New York City in September 2016. As a sort of turning of the page, the last track of the new album is a new version of  the first track of my first album I released shortly after moving to the city. 

My goal for this album was to write songs that could be mistaken for lost entries in the Great American Songbook. OriginallyI had planned to record an album of jazz standards, but decided to write my own standards instead. This book of songs pays tribute to the lineage of master songwriters that I love so much, while trying to create repertoire that could potentially outlive me. This album also marks my return to writing lyrics after many years of ignoring that side of my artistry. However, this  isn’t purely a straight ahead record,  as I also play Wurlitzer and occasionally dip into my avant garde tendencies. In short, this is the closest I’ve come to representing the full spectrum of my musical personality on record.

The band will be celebrating the release of the record this fall with a weekend at Smalls Jazz Club September 4th and 5th. Save the dates if you can!

As always, if you’d like to support my work, the best ways are to purchase my music through my website or subscribe to my Patreon.
In closing, please enjoy a few of my recent cultural consumptions. Hope to catch you at a show soon!

Read: Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify - Liz Pelly

Listen: Joy Spring & Love and Longing - Bill Carrothers

Spiral Staircases - Larry June, Curren$y & The Alchemist

Trying Times - James Blake

Watch: Trust Me: The False Prophet
Billy Preston: That’s The Way God Planned It