You Can’t Steal My Joy is an exuberant debut album that’s destined to cement Ezra Collective’s status as one of the UK’s most exciting groups. The record features friends and fans,JorjaSmith, KOKOROKO and LoyleCarner.
Ezra Collective’s incredible musicianship and spirited, inclusive approach to music – which draws on afrobeat, Latin, hip-hop, grime and more – has seen them break out beyond the thriving UK jazz scene. They’ve played Quincy Jones’ birthday party, completed a mosh-pit-filled and completely sold out UK tour, and recently toured America for the first time. Their forthcoming dates include various summer festivals and a 2019 UK tour playing at their biggest venues yet.
Ezra Collective are five young Londoners; bandleader Femi Koleoso (drums), his brother TJ Koleoso (bass), Joe Armon-Jones (keys), Dylan Jones (trumpet), and James Mollison (saxophone). The quintet’s 2017 EP, Juan Pablo: The Philosopher, won ‘Best Jazz Album’ at Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide Awards and the band picked up ‘Best UK Jazz Act’ and ‘Live Experience Of The Year’ at last year’s Jazz FM Awards.
“Growing up as young people in London has challenges but, rather than focus on all the negativity surrounding us, we’ve decided to focus on the positives”, explains Femi. “You can steal a lot of things from us – our ability to travel freely, our access to education, our right to a level playing field, even our ability to live life at its full potential – but as long as we don’t forget our core truth, You Can’t Steal Our Joy.”
Release date: Friday, April 26th 2019