Ezra Collective made history as the first jazz act ever to win the prestigious Mercury Prize — a milestone that says as much about their immediacy as it does about their musicianship. Few groups manage to feel this open, this welcoming, without sacrificing the complexity at the heart of jazz. Their music moves with a rare clarity of purpose: immediate, rhythmically generous, yet built on a deep understanding of groove, improvisation and collective interplay. Drawing on an eclectic brew of afrobeat, soul, calypso, reggae, hip-hop and R&B, the London-based quintet — Femi Koleoso, TJ Koleoso, Ife Ogunjobi, James Mollison and Joe Armon-Jones — have taken that sound across the world, from packed rooms in London and Chicago to dance floors in Lagos and Sydney. Along the way it became increasingly clear that rhythm travels easily, that dance can collapse distance, and that the language of groove needs little translation. Their latest album “Dance, No One’s Watching” (2024) grows directly out of that realization: a celebration of movement as something sacred and communal, a record that traces the arc of a night out while honoring the shared pulse that runs through every city they’ve played. This summer, Ezra Collective bring that unifying spirit to Way Out West.