Mo’ Betta Thursdays’ Mix of Jazz Acts Enlivens Confluence 2025

Harvey Cummings II does not claim the annual Confluence music conference and artist showcase in Charlotte was his idea, but he did have some early input on the event when it was still in its preliminary stages that proved integral as Confluence enters its fourth year.

An award-winning saxophonist, pianist and songwriter, Cummings remembers sitting in on meetings in 2018 with Robert Krumbine and Rick Thurmond of Charlotte Center City Partners, both of whom would prove instrumental in launching and fostering the event, which takes place at various venues across the Queen City from Oct. 8-10.

“I said … we need a dedicated music conference,” Cummings recalls. “We need stuff where people can learn about the business and … how to advance and elevate what they do.”

Team Cumming’s concept of a symposium with a music festival spotlighting the vibrant sounds of the region, you have a pretty good definition of Confluence, which takes its name from the place where two rivers meet and combine currents into a bigger waterway.

Produced by Music Everywhere Charlotte, a nonprofit launched by CCCP and headed by Thurmond with a goal of growing Charlotte’s music scene and economy, Confluence launched in 2019 at the US National Whitewater Center.

After a four-year pandemic-imposed hiatus, the event returned in 2023 with an expanded palette of conferences and shows. Confluence 2025 continues that trend with more than 25 workshops, mentoring sessions, panel discussions and networking events from Oct. 8-10.

In 2024, the watershed musical event offered bills featuring rock, pop, folk, hip-hop and soul. All those genres are represented in Confluence 2025, with the crucial addition of a program showcasing modern jazz artists scheduled for Oct. 9 at Bo’s on NoDa. The Confluence event will be a special iteration of an ongoing weekly jazz showcase called Mo’ Betta Thursdays at the new beach bar located in the former Free Will Craft + Vine space.

Queen City nerve spoke with three jazz masters playing the Confluence showcase at Bo’s — Cummings, Braxton Bateman, and Elijah Freeman of The Blackhawk Quintet — to get their thoughts on Queen City jazz, and how they jam, roll and flow with Confluence.

The making of a Mo’ Betta Thursday

Charlotte trumpeter Braxton Bateman grew up in Charlotte surrounded by music.

“Family, school and church all played a part,” Bateman says. “But what really sparked [my interest] was realizing how music made people feel. I loved that I could connect with people without saying a word, just through sound.”

That pull has stayed with him ever since. Bateman’s grandfather Edgar Bateman Jr., an accomplished jazz drummer, gifted Bateman a trumpet and the instrument became Bateman’s voice. He counts Miles Davis and Stevie Wonder as early inspirations, and later artists like Anderson .Paak and Frank Ocean with showing him how to blend genres while staying true to his chosen instrument.

After attending Northwest School of the Arts for both middle and high school, Bateman went on to tour internationally with acts like B.B. King All-Stars and Jamaaladeen Tacuma, an American funk, free jazz and avant-garde bassist and composer.

“Touring early in my career showed me the level of professionalism it takes to move a crowd,” Bateman notes. He credits his touring opportunities with helping to shape a style that is rooted in jazz but not boxed in by it.

“It’s trumpet-driven, but it also leans into R&B, neo-soul and hip-hop textures,” Bateman says. “I want it to feel like something familiar yet new.”

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At 27 years old, Bateman is still experimenting with his sound, recently incorporating vocoder into his repertoire. In his live shows, he uses the electronic instrument popularized by Krautrock pioneers Kraftwerk to add texture and color to performances and to make his horn sound almost human.

Bateman believes the city has shaped him and his music.

“Charlotte pushes you to be resourceful and authentic,” he maintains. “There’s not a huge [music] industry machine here, so you learn to create your own lane.”

The lane Bateman created is Mo’ Betta Thursdays, described in its Eventbrite listing as “a living, breathing jam session where the music leads and the players follow.”

In partnership with Angel and Deanna Sargent, owners of the temporarily closed A-part[meant] Boutique + Gallery, Bateman originally launched the event at The Exchange at 36th, a market and bar in NoDa.

Drawing on the Sargents’ art and fashion savvy, and Bateman’s background in music, Mo’ Betta Thursday aims to create a space where musicians can stretch out and audiences can feel part of the exploration. Bateman’s goal for the popular event, which moved to larger digs at Bo’s on NoDa earlier this year, is for it to become a community.

“Mo’ Betta Thursdays is about making the city feel alive with live music and giving people a reason to look forward to Thursdays,” he says.

A jazz saxophonist celebrates hard bop

Elijah Freeman, saxophonist and co-founder of local jazz ensemble Blackhawk Quintet, was born in New York but spent his childhood in Charlotte. He became a fan of early-2000s R&B artists like Anthony Hamilton but didn’t start playing music himself until his family moved to Texas in 2013.

Inspired by his saxophone-playing father, Freeman picked up the instrument and honed his playing style in high school ensembles in Plano. He landed his first gig at age 15, playing jazz standards in a Dallas cafe.

In his junior year, Freeman took part in Essentially Ellington, an event where his high school band played Duke Ellington’s music at Lincoln Center in New York City.

When Freeman was 17, his father fell ill with multiple sclerosis, so his family made plans to return to Charlotte for his senior year in high school.

Through connections Freeman had made at Essentially Ellington, he learned about JazzArts Charlotte, a nonprofit established by Lonnie and Ocie Davis to promote an audience for jazz through education, performances and musician support.

The summer before moving back to the Queen City, Freeman attended a JazzArts Charlotte summer camp, where he met talented trumpeter Ariel Mejia. It would prove to be a turning point for Freeman, but before that would come he attended UNC Chapel Hill on a Kenan Scholarship to study music.

“I didn’t graduate because COVID happened in the middle of my sophomore year,” Freeman says. “The music programs fell apart. I [felt] like, there was no point in me being there.”

At a low ebb, Freeman quit music and launched a commercial painting business. The venture was successful, but without music in his life he soon grew miserable. When Mejia called offering a gig at a local party, Freeman jumped at the chance.

The two friends started hanging out every day, practicing constantly.

“We workshopped this concept of being a horn duo,” Freeman offers. “What if we locked in? It’s like we breathe on the same level.”

From there, Freeman and Mejia perfected a selection of soli, rehearsed solos that became the basis for some more fleshed-out tunes.

Soon the pair recruited a roster of rotating friends to form the Blackhawk Quintet. The makeup of the group depends on where the group is playing and who among their gifted musician friends lives closest to which gig.

At age 25, Freeman joined the US Army Reserve in December 2024. He currently plays in the 208th Army Reserve Band, based in Concord. He also plays a residency at Eighty Eights Coffee and Cocktails music lounge on Raleigh Street while continuing to guide the Blackhawk Quintet with Mejia.

The underpinning of the quintet’s repertoire is hard bop, a jazz style developed in the 1950s as a contrast to the bebop played by greats like saxophonist Charlie Parker. Compared to bebop’s fast tempos, angular melodies and complex harmonies, hard bop draws from gospel, blues and soul.

“It’s the same harmonic concepts from bebop, but extended and pushed forward in its sonic boundaries,” Freeman offers. “Hard bop is this lost generation of sound. Nothing past it, or before it, sounds like it.”

The band’s debut LP Englewood, which dropped in June, was devised to sound like it was recorded in 1958, Freeman says. The group’s latest single “Stretch” was released in September.

A local legend weighs in

When he was a child, Harvey Cummings II was inspired by his mother’s piano playing.

“That was my first taste of [music] — turning noise into notes,” he says. A prodigy, Cummings had perfect pitch, and he aced college music theory courses while still in 10th grade. At age 9 he picked up the saxophone and started playing at Charlotte juke joints like The Excelsior Club by the time he turned 13.

After attending Northwest School of the Arts, where he was classmates with saxophonist Adrian Crutchfield and drummer-promoter Tim Scott Jr., Cummings went to North Carolina Central University in Durham. One of his teachers there was revered saxophonist, composer and bandleader Branford Marsalis.

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“He was harsh,” Cummings remembers. “He told me if my horn could talk, it would have a speech impediment.”

Benefiting from the tough love he received from valuable mentors like Marsalis, Cummings earned a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Music.

He has become a revered instrumentalist, songwriter and producer, performing for President Barack Obama, playing sax and keys for the Cartoon Network’s animated show The Boondocks, and writing for the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra.

His most recent producing gig has been with critically acclaimed rapper Mavi.

“I’m a hip-hop kid,” Cummings notes. “Jazz was the first hip-hop.”

An artist who has worked with a roster of homegrown talent including Elevator Jay, Cyanca and Erick Lottary, Cummings considers himself a national but still Charlotte-based artist — and he intends to remain that way. One of his stated goals is to bring a Grammy home to Charlotte.

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“It’s for Charlotte, more than me,” he says. “Charlotte has never had a jazz instrumentalist do that type of thing.”

Cummings notes that the Queen City has more than its fair share of award-winners, but they had to move away to accomplish their goals. (Cummings’ colleague Crutchfield has come close with a Grammy nomination.)

Cummings plans to release his debut LP Only Child soon, coupling it with a tour. Thematically, he says the album relates to his family and his upbringing as an only child.

Even here, Cummings pays tribute to his hometown. The album’s most recent advance single, posted on Cummings’ website, is “Su Casa,” a tribute to the Afrobeat parties held at Petra’s and recently revived by local curator of all things culture Jasiatic at Levine Avenue of the Arts.

“I was trying to envision what [Nigerian musician and Afrobeat founder] Fela Kuti’s music would sound like in 2025, and also [pay] homage to Su Casa,” Cummings offers.

A Confluence of jazz artists in NoDa

Since Cummings was involved in Confluence since before its launch, he readily said yes when asked to play the combined Mo’ Betta Thursday/Confluence show on Oct. 9. He’s no stranger to Mo’ Betta Thursdays, having played as a special guest at the event before.

As an architect of Mo’ Betta Thursdays, Bateman is thrilled to add the weekly jazz event to Confluence’s musical offerings.

“I’m excited because it feels like a perfect fit — Mo’ Betta has always been about bringing people together and Confluence is doing that on a citywide scale,” Bateman says.

Freeman is also an old hand at Mo’ Betta Thursdays, having played in the event’s early lineup before doing his military service from January to June. Soon after returning to Charlotte, Freeman again played onstage for the event.

He said he was pleasantly surprised to be asked to take part in Confluence, promptly agreeing to commit Blackhawk Quintet to the show that brings his band onto the bill with Bateman and Cummings.

“Anything that we could do to get the message of love through music is the most important thing we can do for each other,” Freeman says. “Confluence does just that.”

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“Confluence feels like the perfect way to align Mo’ Betta with something bigger happening in Charlotte,” Bateman notes.

“Every year [Confluence] grows, the circumference gets bigger,” Cummings says. “I just want the word to get out on Confluence. It’s a dope thing.”

Jazz may be the ideal genre for an event bearing the name Confluence. If the blues is the wellspring of American music, then jazz is the headwaters, the swift running torrent nourished by ragtime, spirituals, field hollers, brass bands and classical music — all tributaries that make jazz the true American art form, a braided stream of musical and cultural currents ever flowing forward.