Sublime ensemble playing meets a vibrant spark of joy and hope when the British band Ezra Collective take to the stage. Drawing on the improvisational spirit of jazz, the band has, since their debut album You Can’t Steal My Joy (2019), built a bridge between jazz and a wider audience through engaging live performances, a radical openness to different genres and one acclaimed album after another.
Ezra Collective became the first jazz band ever to win the prestigious Mercury Prize for their 2022 album Where I’m Meant To Be. And in 2025, they won a Brit Award for Best Band – another first for a group with its roots in jazz. But the Ezra Collective certainly do not limit themselves to jazz as a genre, and band leader and drummer Femi Koleoso has also made a name for himself as a live drummer for Gorillaz. As an audience member, you are inevitably swept away by a stunning mix of soulful grooves, hip-hop, Afrobeat, dub/reggae and Cuban rhythms, and it is just as natural for the group to draw inspiration from Kendrick Lamar and Fela Kuti as it is from Sun Ra.
Their choice of collaborators also says a lot about the group’s broad horizons. On their superb 2024 album Dance, No One’s Watching, they collaborated with, amongst others, the soul singer Olivia Dean. The same album introduced a collaboration with the singer Yazmin Lacey on the track “God Gave Me Feet for Dancing”, which Barack Obama highlighted as one of his favourite tracks from that year.
On their new album Here Because of Hope, Ezra Collective continue to use music and danceable rhythms to foster hope and resistance in an often dark world – this time in collaboration with, amongst others, the rapper Pa Salieu, who performed at the Roskilde Festival in 2026. Their music never strays from the raw edges of life, yet at the same time conveys a message about the healing power of community. That message is particularly evident at the group’s concerts. “A fantastic, hugely uplifting experience,” wrote Clash Magazine when Ezra Collective impressed at the Glastonbury Festival in 2025. Roskilde Festival can likewise look forward to an explosive experience of pure musical energy.