Mark Lomax

Columbus-based Mark Lomax II is a critically acclaimed musician, composer, activist, and educator who’s performed with gospel choirs around the country and worked with jazz artists such as Delfeayo Marsalis, Clark Terry, and Bennie Maupin. A local treasure, the artist uses his talents to explore the spiritual and sociopolitical aspects of African American art and to build bridges in the community.

The Artist Residency Award will support completion of 400: An Afrikan Epic. For this ambitious 12-album project, Lomax focuses on the story of black America over the 400 years between the start of the transatlantic slave trade and today, but delves further back into precolonial African history and pushes beyond the present with an Afrofuturist vision of community strength and union.

With 400: An Afrikan Epic, Lomax celebrates the resilience, brilliance, strength, genius, and creativity of a people who continue to endure while offering an inspired view of the future. The release of the albums on January 23, 2019, will be celebrated by a live performance of selections from the work at Columbus’s Lincoln Theatre on January 26, 2019.