The Music Was Always There

Brandon Meeks is bringing jazz home — one Sunday at a time.

Brandon Meeks will tell you he's not a household name, although many jazz aficionados would likely disagree with that.

"I've had a pretty successful career as a jazz artist," he says, "but I'm not like a celebrity jazz musician or anything."

Household name or not, Meeks is something rarer — a full-time working artist who has spent more than 20 years building something real — performing and collaborating in Indianapolis and neighboring regions where great music gets made and mostly goes unnoticed. And this summer, he's bringing all of it to Arts for Lawrence on the Fort Ben Cultural Campus.

Jazz Concert Series

Starting in June, Meeks will curate and perform in the 3rd Sunday Jazz Concerts, a free monthly series hosted by Arts for Lawrence. Bring a lawn chair. Bring your kids. Bring your friends and neighbors. The first concert is on June 21, followed by performances on July 19 and August 16.

"I want families and people who maybe can't get into a jazz club to be able to experience something cool," Meeks says. "No cover charge, no drink minimum, no babysitter required. Just a Sunday afternoon and something worth showing up for."

The series runs three Sundays through the summer. The first concert will feature Meeks in a trio format alongside pianist William Menefield and drummer Cassius Goens. The remaining two shows will expand into a quintet, with original compositions and new work premiering throughout.

A stew of different vibes

Meeks has long been fascinated by what happens when musicians from different cities share a stage. It's not just geography. It's sound, he says.

"Indianapolis has a laid-back, self-assured approach," he explains. "Chicago has this urgency, this rich history of avant-garde jazz. Cincinnati has its own thing. Louisville has something else entirely."

Combine them, he says, and you get something that none of those scenes could produce alone. "It's like pulling flavors and seasoning from different sources. The combination is what makes it unique."

His own sound reflects a similar kind of mixing. Raised in Gary, Indiana, Meeks grew up surrounded by gospel music, hip hop, and soul — a mother who had him in church four days a week, a DJ brother spinning hip hop, an older brother who introduced him to the deep roots of Black music. All of it lives in how he plays jazz today, even when the form is acoustic and straight-ahead.

That upbringing also shaped his vision for what a jazz concert can feel like. "The kind of family gatherings we would have when I was a kid … we'd be out at the park, and there would be music in the air, and people just coming together," he says. "Really enjoying each other, as well as enjoying the music. And really just celebrating our culture as Black Americans." 

That's the atmosphere he's after at Fort Ben — what he describes as "the combination of an outdoor cookout and a scaled-down, more relaxed jazz festival vibe."

The stories that don't get told

In 2025, Meeks created Unsung Giants — a nationally touring performance project built around conversations with under-recognized jazz artists. The idea was to find the musicians who filled in the gaps of the national jazz narrative, capture their stories, and turn them into new music.

"Indianapolis is known for Freddie Hubbard and Wes Montgomery," he says. "But I feel like that's just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many stories and so much history that don't get told on a national level but that I feel are equally important."

He was also clear about what he didn't want the project to be. "The spirit of jazz was always moving forward. I didn't want this to be a nostalgia exercise. I wanted it to be something that fuels and pushes the music into the future by keeping it rooted in its history."

The project also reflects something personal. Meeks spent nearly a decade as a graphic designer before making the leap to full-time musician — a decision born less from confidence than from necessity. He'd been laid off from ad agencies multiple times, each time because a firm was too dependent on a single client. Eventually the logic became unavoidable: if stability isn't what the nine-to-five is actually giving you, maybe it's worth betting on yourself.

"I had built up a strong network, strong relationships, a well-rounded career," he says. "I just hadn't made the leap yet."

He made it. And because he did, he talks to other artists now — honestly, without the usual cheerleading — about the hard work and networking it actually takes.

Carrying Indiana Avenue forward

The 3rd Sunday Jazz Concerts are rooted in something older than Meeks himself. Indiana Avenue — once the cultural and musical heart of Black Indianapolis — shaped the musicians who shaped him. Mentors like Clifford Ratliff and Melvin Rhyne came from that world and passed parts of it on to younger musicians.

"That history has to live in people," Meeks says, "because it doesn't physically live in the geographical location anymore."

He's thinking about the next generation too. You never know, he points out, who's standing in that crowd on a Sunday afternoon — which kid will grow up to be a patron of the arts, an artist themselves, or someone who starts building their own cultural experiences.

"You never know who may become your next patron of the arts because they were exposed to these experiences as a young child," he says. "Or who the next crop of artists will be. Or who will see what I'm doing and start creating other cultural experiences.

"This was inspired by things I saw in my younger years," he adds. "I'm just trying to push that inspiration forward."

3rd Sunday Jazz Concerts Curated and performed by Brandon Meeks Fort Ben Cultural Campus | Free and open to the public. Bring a lawn chair. Food trucks on site.

Visit Arts for Lawrence for dates and details.