Lara Downes

In addition to her reputation as one of the great concert pianists of the early 21st century, Lara Downes is known for being a daring curator, often aiming to subvert received wisdom about music history through unusual juxtapositions of material. Downes was born in 1973 to a Jamaican father and a Jewish mother of Russian descent, and she has cited her upbringing as part of the inspiration for her eclectic musical palette. After spending her formative years studying piano at top music schools throughout Europe—she'd started playing at the age of four—she returned to her hometown of San Francisco and began her performing career in earnest in the 2000s. Featuring experiments with jazz and pop as well as classical, her conceptually rich discography is dominated by left-of-center tribute albums exploring the legacy of figures as varied as Leonard Bernstein, Billie Holliday, and Scott Joplin. On one of her most acclaimed releases, 2016’s America Again, she elides jazz-influenced classical music with jazz and spirituals, incorporating disparate elements of the American musical vernacular in unexpected ways. In the 2010s and 2020s, Downes expanded her ongoing mission to highlight the music of Black and female composers in her work as a radio host, video series creator, label head (at Rising Sun Music), and essayist.