Riley Mulherkar Live in The Black Box, NYU Abu Dhabi

Trumpeter Riley Mulherkar is best known as a founding member of The Westerlies, a New York-based brass quartet made up of West Coast ex-pats who play a mix of jazz, modern classical and folk compositions.

Described as ‘über hip, modern yet timeless’, Mulherkar was a 2020 recipient of New York’s Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award for his work as ‘an original bandleader, composer, arranger, educator, community activist and advocate for jazz and the arts’. He is a faculty member of the College of Performing Arts and the New School and serves as Artistic Director at Joye in Aiken, bringing leading young talent to the historic city of Aiken, South Carolina. Mulherkar is an Edwards Artist, performing on Edwards trumpets.

Mulherkar’s deep admiration for the Great American Songbook – the canon of the most important and influential American popular songs and jazz standards from the early 20th century – is evident in his debut solo recording, Riley. Added to that is the sonically modern setting for his melodious interpretation of this rich tradition, a sound design shaped by the producers Rafiq Bhatia and Chris Pattishall. They have created a series of textured, intricately crafted spaces, training a cinematographer’s lens on the continuum of old songs as well as new pieces by Mulherkar in a radically bold audio framework.

Mulherkar works with a number of leading artists, including Wynton Marsalis, Anna Deavere Smith and Alan Cumming.