Jazz at St John's

Jazz at St John’s brings you a night of jazz music featuring pianist Dr Samuel Boateng and saxophonist Eve Boulos. Together, they will perform jazz standards such as Softly as the Morning Sunrise, My Funny Valentine, and You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To, along with original compositions.

Dr Samuel Boateng is a Ghanaian jazz pianist, composer, visual artist, playwright, and filmmaker. He is also a Career Development Research Fellow in music at St John’s College, Oxford and holds a PhD in music from University of Pittsburgh as well as a Master’s in ethnomusicology from Kent State University. As an ASCAP, ACLS, and Andrew Mellon awardee, he has collaborated with artists in Ghana, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Indonesia, and his music has been performed by the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra, Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Kent State Orchestra, Quartetto di Venezia, Adepa Ensemble, and Afro Yaqui Music Collective.

As a researcher he examines the continuous and mutual influences between Africa and the African Diaspora in order to challenge colonial narratives that place Africa only in the past of jazz and Black music. His 2022 documentary film Accra Jazz Dialogues captures this Afrodiasporic relationship by bringing attention to the untold stories of contemporary jazz artists in Ghana’s capital city of Accra. With the support of the Heinz Endowment for the Arts, Boateng wrote and composed Sunsum is Spirit in 2021—an original musical about myth, migration, and collaboration in the African diaspora.

Eve Boulos is a British Arab saxophonist in her final year studying Music at St John’s College, Oxford University. She attended St Mary’s Music School from 2015 to 2021, where she built a strong foundation in both classical and jazz, with a focus on improvisation.

Eve has performed in venues across the UK, including the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow and Pizza Express Live in London, with orchestras such as the Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra, the National Youth Jazz Orchestra of Scotland, and Jan’s Collective. She also has a strong interest in education, which led her to take part in a teaching internship at The British School in New Delhi during the summer of 2023.

Host or Publisher St John's College