A Jazz Generations Initiative 2026 Jazz Cohort Culminating Concert
STEVE LANDS presents MODUS-ANNON
Trumpeter and composer Steve Lands' Modus-Annon is about the Sun and the Moon and what they represent in our lives
Throughout 2026, this year’s JGI Jazz Cohort fellows have been contemplating healing in practice, democracy within jazz culture, and Intergenerationality in the discipline of music. For cohort fellow Steve Lands, this has led to a new generation of musicians folding into what has become over the last five years, an ever-evolving, multi-movement series in New Orleans known as his Rearranging the Planets series. Already a series of original suites, democratic in its approach to composition among peers, the latest iteration of one of the suites now finds Lands teaching his original music to a small group of students who are beginning to emerge as their own players. 
Modus-Annon is about the Sun and the Moon and what they represent in our lives. The piece is a continuation of Lands’ Rearranging the Planets concept, where he composes music around the meanings we’ve associated with the celestial bodies that surround us. In that first suite, he used English classical composer Gustav Holst’s piece The Planets as a springboard to arrange and compose music about the planets in the solar system and their association with us through more diverse cosmological perspectives. 
For this next movement, Modus-Annon – loosely translated as “the mode of one course” – Lands wanted to give a similar treatment to the two stellar entities we most regularly engage with, the Sun and the Moon. While Rearranging the Planets is his interpretation of Holst’s compositions, Modus-Annon is an entirely original work in the series. In this composition, Lands frames the Sun as a representation of strife, or the work of life, while the Moon is framed as the reason for the spiritual motivation for our lives. The entire suite serves as the soundtrack of a single day in life, from dawn when we typically wake up, all the way to dusk when we lay down again to rest. 
“Life is all but a test/ Practically spinning at some boss's behest/ But when the day ends/ we see family and friends/ And become unbothered by the rest.” ~Steve Lands on Modus-Annon
Featured performers:
Steve Lands - trumpet 
Gladney - tenor saxophone 
Amina Scott - bass 
Arnold Little III - guitar 
Chloe White - alto saxophone 
Izzy Chase - piano, keys 
Mason Tanner - drums 
Amber René - vocals 
Noé Cugny - visuals 
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ABOUT STEVE LANDS:
Stephen Lands is a Baton Rouge-bred, New Orleans-based trumpeter and composer who’s had the distinct pleasure of performing with some of world’s greatest musicians, including touring and recording with the world-renowned Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Elvis Costello, Jazz at Lincoln Center alumni Herlin Riley, Wess “Warmdaddy” Anderson, Victor Goines and Ronald Westray, Shannon “King of Tremé” Powell, Jason Marsalis, Evan Christopher, Grammy nominees Cyrille Aimée and Jamison Ross, Quiana Lynell, and most recently, PJ Morton. 
As a composer, he’s scored the music for a handful of projects with filmmaker Marion Hill, including 2021’s Sundance Film Festival Award-winning feature, Ma Belle, My Beauty, and serves as co-musical director with Oscar Rossignoli for Hill’s new live multimedia project, Saigon Jazz Revival.
Hot on the heels of two sold-out debut performances of his current signature project, “Rearranging the Planets” for the Spring 2022 season at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), Lands has since been presenting new movements from this body of original compositions, such as the project’s little sister, “KosmiKrewe” aka “Cosmic Roux.”  |  Learn More: https://www.thestevelands.space
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ABOUT JAZZ GENERATIONS INITIATIVE:
The Jazz Generations Initiative (JGI) is a two-city project anchored in New Orleans and New York, launched in 2025. JGI New Orleans includes an innovative interdisciplinary residency, fellowship, and creative hub based in New Orleans, offering opportunities for gatherings grounded in experimentation, creativity, and interdisciplinary exploration. JGI New Orleans draws inspiration from the city of New Orleans and its connections with the African diaspora, the Global South, and the Gulf South region. Learn more:  www.jazzgenerations.org