Nairobi Mouning Trio and Friends
Paul Brown Monday Night Jazz Series
Asylum Hill Congregational Church
Hartford
August 3, 2026
The adage goes that practice makes perfect, which basically means it takes a long time to get good at anything.
If that’s the case, how does one explain the fantastic performance of the Nairobi Mouning Trio and their special guests at the penultimate Monday Night Jazz concert of the summer?
Monday’s concert was a showcase for women in jazz, the second of the six week series. The trio consists of Nairobi on the drums, Nikki Harris-Stone on bass and Lucas Nickelsburg on piano. Inclement weather moved the performance from its usual venue at Bushnell Park’s pavilion to the pews of Asylum Hill Congregational Church.
The Nairobi Mouning Trio is unique for a couple reasons. I can’t think of many acts I’ve covered that starred a Black woman on the drums, much less as the leader for a jazz ensemble. Also, the members of the trio are young– all of them are still pursuing their undergraduate studies.
Their relative lack of experience had no impact on the high level of play the trio demonstrated. I’ve covered bands where the members have been performing music for twice as long as the trio has even been alive, and I would place the Nairobi Mouning Trio right beside them in terms of raw talent and musicality.
The trio used their opening set as a platform for other young artists as well. Their performance of Connecticut’s own Jimmy Greene’s classic “Yeahyouright!” featured Chase Wohl on saxophone. From the maturity of his sound, the ease of his improvisation and his poise, I couldn’t believe that Wohl is a rising sophomore in high school. Mouning and Harris-Stone gave him a strong bassline and rhythm to play off of, and Nickelsburg expertly highlighted the saxophone with his play on the piano. There was a level of emotion in Wohl’s performance that belied his youth as well. It was a great performance.
Later in the evening, the trio and Wohl were joined by Zani Meade, a college sophomore whose talent far outpaces her age. Meade used her powerful voice to transform the Frank Sinatra (and others) standard “It Never Entered My Mind” into a soulful ballad. Meade had great control over her voice, crescendoing with enough force to reach the high-vaulted ceiling of the church.
Mouning is a gracious band leader, but the time finally came for her to show off her stuff in the appropriately named “Drum Song”, which she described as an avant garde piece. An epic drum solo is more a feature of a hard-driving rock show than a jazz concert, but Mouning showed both her stylized flair and a level of artistic restraint, filling the space of the song with syncopation, surprising rhythm and a stop-and-go cadence that had the audience sitting on the edge of their seats.
I was truly wowed by the talent and precision of the Nairobi Mouning Trio and Friends. Youth and experience are often pitted against each other, but in the case of Monday evening, youth definitely scored a knockout punch.
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Jamil goes to check out a featured artist who’s in the spotlight now.
