Ezra Collective

Celebrate the release of Ezra Collective’s new album, at the band’s special London Roundhouse show. This will be the first opportunity to hear Here Because of Hope played in full, and the band will be joined by some very special guests.

Few bands in British music carry the weight of community and craft quite like Ezra Collective.

Formed in the youth clubs of London, the five-piece — Femi Koleoso (drums), TJ Koleoso (bass), Joe Armon-Jones (keys), James Mollison (saxophone) and Ife Ogunjobi (trumpet) — have spent over a decade documenting their shared lives in sound.

Their ascent has been remarkable. Rooted in jazz but never confined by it, their 2022 album Where I’m Meant To Be won the Mercury Prize, before Dance, No One’s Watching took them to Wembley Arena and a BRIT Award for Group of the Year in 2025. For a jazz band, it was unprecedented.

Their forthcoming album, Here Because Of Hope, is their most ambitious yet: conceived in three parts that trace the movement of Black people across continents and decades, from West Africa to the Caribbean to the UK. Its concept was born from a question that had long occupied the band: why does so much Black music born out of pain sound so joyful? From afrobeat to calypso to grime, the pattern was everywhere. “We came up with hope,” Femi explains. “It’s the hope that one day this pain will change. So we’re going to write in anticipation of that place.”

Recorded largely in a week at Miraval studio in the south of France, the album opens with the West African movement, with BAFTA-winner Letitia Wright reading a scene-setting monologue before the band launches into tracks drawing on afrobeat, highlife and more. The Caribbean movement follows, weaving together reggae, salsa and roots music, with contributions from Lila Iké and Pa Salieu. The final movement lands in the UK, employing Leona Lewis and Libianca to further connect the album’s ancestral dots.

At its core, Here Because Of Hope is a record about migration, faith, and the belief that something better is possible. “The album is the photograph,” TJ says. “It might not happen tomorrow. So make a photograph of it.” Fourteen years in, Ezra Collective are still taking photographs. And on this record, hope sounds more like a certainty than ever.

Tickets for this show are being sold exclusively via DICE.

Tickets bundles go on sale Fri 21st Aug 11AM.