Our artist-in-residence this year, drummer, beatmaker and exploratory mixtape artist Makaya McCraven, will perform in at least four different configurations over the course of the festival. A prolific drummer, composer and producer, McCraven has been aptly called a “cultural synthesizer,” with a unique gift for collapsing space, destroying borders and blending past, present and future into poly-textural arrangements of post-genre, jazz-rooted 21st-century folk music. According to The New York Times, “McCraven has quietly become one of the best arguments for jazz’s vitality.”