Caroline Davis (solo) and Kelly Bray/Denver Nuckolls (duo)
Photo by Michael Jackson
Caroline Davis (solo)
kelly bray / denver nuckolls
Saturday, october 17, 2026 at 8pm
SMFA at Tufts (Anderson Auditorium)
230 The Fenway, Boston
Music: 8pm (Doors: 7:30pm)
Advance tickets $15 general | $10 for non-SMFA students and Non-Event members
At the door: $20 general | $15 non-SMFA students and Non-Event members
FREE for SMFA students & MCC Card to Culture holders
No one turned away for lack of funds
Ticketing handled by Mandorla Music
Non-Event, Mandorla Music, and the SMFA at Tufts are thrilled to co-present a solo performance by Brooklyn-based saxophonist, composer, and activist Caroline Davis, plus a duo set by local trumpeter Kelly Bray and drummer Denver Nuckolls!
About the Artist
Caroline Davis is a Brooklyn-based saxophonist, composer, and activist, whose work is driven by a desire for connection and a belief in music’s capacity to expand listeners’ ears, minds, and hearts. A 2025 Guggenheim Fellow in Composition, she is the recipient of the DownBeat Critics Poll Alto Saxophone Rising Star Award, as well as fellowships from NYFA, the Jerome Foundation, Chamber Music America, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Her residencies include MacDowell, The Jazz Gallery, Civitella, and the Rockefeller Estate, and she has served as a mentor for New Music USA’s Next Jazz Legacy program.
Davis’s work spans a wide range of creative contexts, rooted in improvisation and social inquiry. She has released eight albums as a leader and collaborated with artists such as Allison Miller, Lee Konitz, John Zorn, Angelica Sanchez, The Femme Jam, Miles Okazaki, Nicole Mitchell, Rajna Swaminathan, and Matt Mitchell. Her most recent release, Portals, explores themes of grief and memory, and she is also a contributor to Terri Lyne Carrington’s New Standards, a landmark collection of jazz compositions by female-identifying composers.
In addition to her work as a performer and composer, Davis is a dedicated educator, teaching courses on gender in jazz at The New School and maintaining a private studio at the Manhattan School of Music. Her artistic practice is deeply intertwined with advocacy, including work for gender equity through This Is A Movement, and for current and formerly incarcerated individuals through initiatives such as Justice for Keith LaMar, Freer Records, Keys Beats Bars, and Creative Beyond Incarceration.
Caroline Davis’ solo performances are chosen spontaneously, given the atmosphere of the room and the people present. She explores sonic textures offered by interactive technologies, sharing sounds from the saxophone that she considers to be distinctive and quirky. She makes use of Pure Data patches developed by the open source community surrounding the Organelle (the technobear, shreeswifty, critterandguitari, tony j morton, nobuyasu sakonda, soxsa, varicela, nicky-system, samesimilar, and chrisk). The music during this performance will pull from Caroline’s recent solo album, Fallows, created during a time of rest on land in Ucross Wyoming. bell hooks was a constant source of inspiration during this time, through the following ideas: love as a practice of freedom, radical openness, maintenance of commitment, using community as a means of escape, belief in one's capacity to transform, what it means to listen, and eliminating elimination.
Kelly Bray is a trumpet player and improvisor known for dynamic and adventurous performances bridging genres ranging from free jazz to ambient music. She is a regular in the New York City and Boston improvised music scenes, making appearances alongside long respected musicians such as Joe Morris, Brandon Lopez, and Alan Braufman. Recently she supported claire rousay at The Rockwell in Somerville, MA, presenting a set described as "a tour de force of electroacoustic trumpet pyrotechnics".
Denver Nuckolls is a performer, composer, audio engineer, and educator based in the Boston, MA area. His creative practice centers around his various operations as a sonic shapeshifter, translating a world flooded with sound through a variety of explorations in musical presentation, documentation, and communication.
