Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah, the trumpeter and instrument-inventor once known as Christian Scott, will make his first-ever Houston appearance on Friday, December 4, 2026, at 8:00 PM inside the Cullen Theater at the Wortham Theater Center. The six-time Grammy Award nominee is being brought to town by DACAMERA, marking a long-awaited local debut for one of modern jazz's most restless innovators.
The concert was detailed by CultureMap Houston, which identifies the Wortham Theater Center as the venue. The outlet also lists Adjuah as a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer who embraces what it describes as a 21st-century approach built on genre blindness and what CultureMap calls an ethnomusicological approach to limitless fusion. Beyond his six Grammy nominations, Adjuah has also won two Edison Awards and a Doris Duke Award in the Arts, per the same listing.
An Artist Who Built His Own Instruments
Adjuah is far more than a trumpeter chasing tradition. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he invented the Adjuah Bow, a double-sided electric harp that fuses elements of the West African kamele n'goni, donso n'goni, and kora with electric guitar, alongside custom brass instruments he calls the Siren and Sirenette. That instinct toward invention runs through a broader artistic philosophy he calls Stretch Music, introduced in 2012 and 2015 as a genre-blind framework stretching jazz's rhythmic, harmonic, and melodic boundaries into hip-hop, post-bop, and West African traditions, according to the Kennedy Center. The Stretch Music framework arrived with a custom 2015 interactive app offering listeners customizable controls, giving audiences an unusually granular window into his compositions.
Adjuah's identity as an artist is inseparable from his New Orleans lineage. Born Christian Scott in New Orleans in 1983, he legally changed his name to Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah in 2023 to reflect his West African ancestry, and he now serves as Chieftain and Oba of the Xodokan Nation of Maroons as well as Grand Griot of New Orleans, as reported by Wisconsin Union. Those titles connect directly to his musical family: he began training at age 13 under his uncle, NEA Jazz Master saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr., and is the grandson of Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr., who led four nations within New Orleans' Black Masking traditions, according to his official biography at chiefadjuah.com. Adjuah also keeps alive the legacies of both Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr. and Big Chief Donald Harrison Jr., with the elder Harrison recognized as a Louisiana legend.
From Berklee to Grammy Nominations
Adjuah's formal training moved fast. He graduated from the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts in 2001 before attending Berklee College of Music on a full scholarship, completing a dual degree in Professional Music and Film Scoring in just 30 months, per chiefadjuah.com. Since then, he has released 13 studio albums, three live albums, and a greatest hits collection, earning six Grammy nominations for projects including *The Emancipation Procrastination*, *Ancestral Recall*, and *Axiom*, according to AllMusic.
His collaborators span far beyond jazz circles. Adjuah has worked across genres with artists including Prince, Thom Yorke, Mos Def (Yasiin Bey), McCoy Tyner, Flea, Robert Glasper, and Marcus Miller, and has scored his twin brother's film *Samaria*, according to Moods.
DACAMERA's Expanding Role in Houston
DACAMERA is bringing Adjuah to town. Adjuah's December concert is one of seven performances at the Wortham Theater Center, alongside Joshua Redman, Makaya McCraven, Julian Lage, Linda May Han Oh, Arturo O'Farrill, and Alfredo Rodriguez.
Attendees are advised to check with the venue or organization to confirm the event is taking place as scheduled, as it remains subject to change due to weather or other concerns. For a jazz scene that has already welcomed acclaimed voices this season, Adjuah's arrival with his hybrid stringed instruments and brass inventions gives Houston audiences a chance to hear a genre-crossing sound built from decades of New Orleans lineage for the very first time.
