Vesper Sparrow by JJJJJerome Ellis

The work of JJJJJerome Ellis lives comfortably in the gaps between silence and possibility.
The Black disabled Grenadian-Jamaican-American artist creates atmospheric soundscapes with saxophone, organ, hammered dulcimer, electronics, and their voice. Improvisation is at the core of their artistry – often chipping away at large slabs of recordings to reveal the piece like a marble sculptor. It’s an expansive and interdisciplinary practice that allows JJJJJerome to adapt to any medium or form, including recorded music, live theatrical and performance art, scoring, spoken word and storytelling, and multimedia/visual works that incorporate sound.

Living as a person who stutters, using their mouth to express themselves proved difficult growing up. The practice of spelling their performance moniker “JJJJJerome” stems from the realization that the word they stutter most frequently is their own name. Despite a brief placement in speech therapy as a child – Everything clicked when they picked up the saxophone in seventh grade. “I still stutter on the saxophone, but it’s different.” As an artist, their creative ethos now revolves around the exploration of stuttering through music, expounding upon the ability of each to shape time. They honor the stutter through art.

Their career began when they started to improvise along with John Coltrane and Billie Holiday CDs on the horn. But as someone drawn to navigating limitations, JJJJJerome has since blossomed into an adept multi-instrumentalist, each instrument being a watershed in paving new avenues of potential sound worlds. Their voice is additionally guided by a reverence for the earth and ancestors – both human and otherwise. With maternal familial ties to the church, and memorable stories of their grandmother performing as a pianist and organist, JJJJJerome’s recent affinity for keyboards holds a meaningful weight.

Forthcoming sophomore record Vesper Sparrow (Shelter Press) is born out of this connection to Black religious tradition and inheritance. It is a continuation of the artist’s ongoing study of the intersections between music and sound, stuttering, and Blackness, through the lens of time. The album is comprised of two complete thoughts, and hinges on a recorded stutter. JJJJJerome splits the four-part composition “Evensong” by fading out the stutter in part two, and sandwiches tracks three and four (“Vesper Sparrow” and “Black-Throated Sparrow”) in-between. “The stutter becomes a structuring moment,” they explain, regarding the opportunity to fill the time opened up.

Suspension, then, becomes integral to JJJJJerome’s musical language. Both stuttering and granular synthesis can suspend moments in time, and “invite multiple ways of inhabiting, traversing, and connecting with others in those moments.” The artist also pulls in elements of pop production – electronic textures and distortions inspired in part by indie-rock; and spoken word, sampling, and audio manipulation drawn from Caribbean and Black American musics.

JJJJJerome’s artistry has been recognized on a wide scale. Their debut record The Clearing (NNA Tapes, 2021) and accompanying book (published by Wendy’s Subway) was awarded the 2022 Anna Rabinowitz Prize for its “restless interrogation of linear time,” as described by esteemed writer Claudia Rankine. Their work has been presented by large cultural institutions, both internationally at the 2023 Venice Biennale and adventurous Rewire Festival; and at home in the US by the Whitney Museum, The Shed, the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, and National Sawdust. JJJJJerome has additionally been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship (2015), Creative Capital Grant (2022), and several MacDowell residencies (2019, 2022). Recently, they have been commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Ars Nova.

A Virginia native, JJJJJerome currently lives in a monastery on traditional Nansemond and Chesepioc territory, aka Norfolk, VA. They live with their wife, poet-ecologist Luísa Black Ellis. earned a B.A. in music theory and ethnomusicology from Columbia University, and went on to lecture in Sound Design at Yale University. With childhood friend James Harrison Monaco, they create vast sonic-storytelling productions as James & JJJJJerome. It’s JJJJJerome’s dream to build a sonic bath house.

JJJJJerome Ellis is an animal, artist, and proud stutterer from Tidewater, VA.

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