Alt Jazz Presents Bilal Live at Control Club Bucharest

Alt Jazz comes in strong with another instalment, this time announcing Grammy Award-winning artist Bilal, coming to Control on July 7, in partnership with Black Rhino Radio. Bilal is one of the voices that define the blend of jazz, hip-hop and neo-soul. More than twenty years into his storied career, the singer, songwriter and producer born Bilal Sayeed Oliver—who, after decades of accolades and A-list collaborations with likes of Kendrick Lamar, Beyonce, Jay-Z, Erykah Badu, Clipse, and so many more—is as locked in as ever. Bilal has always felt that the term neo-soul was reductive—that the music he and his Soulquarian compatriots were creating was, in fact, a logical extension of jazz. Appropriately, the performances on Live at Glasshaus surge with jazz’s improvisatory verve and sense of possibility. Bilal is steeped in jazz: As a child, he’d accompany his father to the legendary Philadelphia jazz club Zanzibar Blue and listen in on musicians while hiding in the coat check. As Bilal recounts: The jazz inflections in my singing came from the internal holy war in my life—my mom was a Sunday school teacher, and I was in the little kid choir. My dad was Muslim, and he didn’t like that I was in the church choir. So my dad took me to the jazz club because he wanted to culture me to some real music.