Chicago born Ben LaMar Gay is a composer, cornetist, singer, poet, and patently eclectic polymath who moves sound, color, and space through folkloric filters to produce electro-acoustic collages. Gay's sound has a highly unique signature style he calls ‘Pan-American’, a wide range of various influences: from jazz to funk, from R&B to tropicalia and from hip hop to electro and contemporary classical. His unification of various styles is always in service of the narrative and never solely a display of technique. With his own voice and cornet playing as a basis he builds up colorful productions that can sound radical on the one hand and warm and inviting on the other. On stage, this can develop in unpredictable ways, thanks to the close and intuitive collaboration with his band members. By being active in Chicago’s experimental music scene and having spent a three-year residency in Brazil, Ben LaMar Gay has collaborated with several influential figures in the world of music, including AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), Nicole Mitchell, Jeff Parker, George Lewis, Jaimie Branch, Makaya McCraven, Tomeka Reid, Natural Information Society, Damon Locks, Joshua Abrams, Mike Reed, Bixiga 70, Celso Fonseca, Angel Bat Dawid, Theo Parrish, Slum Village, and Bitchin Bajas, among others. He is called “a visionary” (The New York Times), “strikingly original” (Afropunk), “uncategorizable” (Pitchfork), and “hands down, one of my favorite musicians on the planet today” (Jeff Parker).