The Marcus Shelby New Orchestra combines music, text, and video in live performance that addresses Black history—past, present, and future. Marcus Shelby has composed several big band orchestral suites that musically honors the legacy of the Black experience such as Harriet Tubman: Bound for the Promised Land, Port Chicago, Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Black Ball: The Negro Leagues and the Blues, Beyond the Blues: The Prison Industrial Complex, and more. For this special SFJAZZ Family Matinee Black History presentation, The Marcus Shelby New Orchestra will perform excerpts from Blues in the City, a musical suite in reflection of life in San Francisco during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns, social unrest, the plight of the unhoused, and other experiences are captured in music, song, text, and images. 

Each one-hour matinee features live performance, audience participation, Q&A, and amazing music.