Between jazz and hip hop, the US-American Robert Glasper experiments, sometimes alongside Jay-Z, Mos Def or Erykah Badu, sometimes with his own experiment. The Conne Island and the Jazzclub Leipzig bring him from Houston to L.E. on Monday, March 17.

"Real music is crash protected - true music is indestructible," reads the liner notes to "Black Radio," the latest album by the Robert Glasper Experiment. The band of the highly talented pianist, composer and bandleader from Houston fuses jazz, hip-hop, R&B and rock into an 'urban music' that couldn't be more contemporary and fresh. The fact that the album with its many special guests (Erykah Badu, Yasiin Bey from Mos Def and others) does not degenerate into a patchwork quilt is due to the common denominator of all those involved: jazz. Musical empathy, spontaneity, courage to experiment (aha, so that's why the band name!) shaped the recordings - and shape the band's live shows.
(Text from the Jazz Calendar in March 2014)