Jonathan Ferr

Pianist, composer, filmmaker, fashion icon and dedicated consciousness raiser, Jonathan Ferr is a pioneering exponent of urban jazz in Brazil, crossing social and musical boundaries, mixing elements of hip-hop, r&b, candomblé ritual, Afro-futurism and the timeless universal African spirits invoked by John Coltrane in A Love Supreme, into his paradigm-shifting compositions. He grew up in Madureira, a suburban neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro with a strong Black culture, but only really discovered the jazz world while a scholarship student in a Rio conservatory and going to jazz clubs in the city’s metropolitan south side, wondering why he was often the only Black person there. He addresses this segregation with a category deflecting fusion of symphonic African jazz with contemporary urban attitudes, from the lyrical to the ritual, visually extending the storytelling in his short films.