An Oakland Jazz Prodigy Celebrates His 18th Birthday With Two Sold-Out Shows

When it’s your 18th birthday, and it’s time to pick an opening song for your sold-out shows at the hometown jazz club, and your parents played John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme while you were being born, the choice is obvious, right?

In front of a supportive crowd that included fellow musicians, family, schoolmates and fans, Ayo Brame kicked off his set at Yoshi’s this past Friday night with none other than “Acknowledgment,” the opener from A Love Supreme, a bold landmark of 20th century music. Tenor sax in hand and a lifetime of creative expression ahead of him, Brame put the mouthpiece to his lips, closed his eyes and blew the song’s famous opening arpeggio.

It set off a variegated 75-minute set that showcased Brame’s breadth of style, and probably the first-ever instance of the music of New Edition, the Rebirth Brass Band, Fela Kuti, Joe Sample and Too Short being played back-to-back on the Yoshi’s stage.

This was no surprise for those who know Brame’s upbringing, in particular his parents’ influence. After the day-one Coltrane — a clear guidepost for Brame’s playing — Yomi and Shimika Brame raised him on a steady diet of great Black music, only a fraction of which Brame was able to cover in his set of 12 songs, which included even more personal favorites via medleys and mashups. In Brame’s world, Too Short’s “Blow the Whistle” and Tupac’s “Dear Mama” live side-by-side with Wayne Shorter’s “Yes or No” and Thelonious Monk’s “Ruby, My Dear.”

In addition to the hard work of rehearsing, Brame mentioned another aspect to his practice during a short backstage conversation before the show: “Mental experience,” he called it. “Like, subliminal-like listening. It’s just been on my whole life, jazz music.”

Brame grew up near Lake Merritt and attended Glenview Elementary before being accepted to Oakland School for the Arts (OSA), which boasts among its alumni the singer Kehlani and actress Zendaya. After graduating from OSA this year, he’ll leave the Bay Area in August for his first-choice college, the Mannes School of Music in New York.

But since picking up the saxophone in 2022, he’s already made a huge splash here — and in tours of the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hong Kong and China. He counts among his local mentors Kev Choice (who served as music director and keyboardist for the Yoshi’s shows) and Howard Wiley. As for fans outside the Bay Area, he’s gotten accolades from both Kamasi Washington and former president Bill Clinton, who during a San Francisco tribute to Willie Mays praised him as a “a brilliant young saxophonist.”

Like most teenagers, Brame has other interests, including video games, visual art, sports and photography. But he’s particularly interested in developing his own voice on his horn, “internalizing” songs (he tends to discard sheet music after memorizing it) and getting lost in chord changes during solos so he can, in his words, “build the puzzle pieces back to the flow of the music.”

One small drawback to his show at Yoshi’s is that the sheer number of songs came at the expense of depth. The audience got a collage of Brame’s interests and influences, alongside a parade of talented collaborators and colleagues who shuffled on and off the stage, including Ian Kelly and RyanNicole. Meanwhile, the constant action somewhat overshadowed the passages where Brame was able to open up and truly show his personality as a soloist.

That’ll be even more important to watch in the coming years as Brame studies in New York and gets exposed to even more of the wider world. As he said backstage, “I think for now, I’ve found my voice. But I’m sure I’ll find even a grander voice later on.”

But this was a birthday party, after all, where a medley of a Washington D.C. go-go version of Raphael Saadiq’s “Still Ray,” a New Orleans brass band rave-up of “Feel Like Funkin’ It Up” and Nigerian funk legend Fela Kuti’s “Original Sufferhead” brought audience members to their feet.

After the Latin-tinged Kamasi Washington number “Truth” and Brame’s own fusion-tinged composition “Oakland in My Soul,” and at the cajoling of the audience, a run-through of “Happy Birthday” — both versions — fittingly ended the night.

As for what’s next for this promising young talent, time can only tell. But while chatting backstage, he offered a small prediction.

“Tupac has a quote,” Brame said, “where he’s like, ‘I’m not saying I’m gonna change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world.’ So that’s me. I wanna spark that mind.”