Sumney’s critically and commercially acclaimed, intensely personal recordings have provided beautiful grounding for people floating through uncertain, isolated times. With its searching lyrics and soaring sound, his album græ—released in two parts in the early months of Covid-19 and named to dozens of “Best of 2020” lists—“quite literally created a ‘grey’ in-between space for listeners to absorb and consider the art,” in Sumney’s words. Growing up between Southern California and the Ghanian city of Accra, then studying poetry at UCLA, he is uniquely attuned to exploring and evoking the unknown. Turning to nature mid-pandemic, Sumney directed the film Blacklachia to accompany his new album, a one-take live performance recorded in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina. For his largest New York City performance yet, he now brings the live experience to BAM.

Brooklyn-born and based experimentalist and multi-instrumentalist Taja Cheek, aka L’Rain, will open the show. Her genre-spanning second album, Fatigue (2021), integrating gospel, jazz, and neo-soul, is “nonlinear and unpredictable without sacrificing grooves and hooks,” says Pitchfork, which ranked it second among “The 50 Best Albums of 2021.”

Part of Music at BAM Curated by Hanif Abdurraqib