Vocalist/composer Derek Lassiter has been a mainstay in the Bay Area arts scene for nearly three decades. His music fuses elements of soul, jazz, R&B and gospel to render a surprisingly joyful account of the journey through dark days that ultimately deliver us back into the light.

His critically acclaimed albums and live performances have featured Bay Area heavyweights including pianist Tammy Hall, producer/percussionist PC Muñoz, composer/pianist Art Khu, and jazz legend Lady Mem’fis. He has been interviewed and played live on local radio and profiled in Julian C. R. Okwu’s book Face Forward: Young African American Men in a Critical Age.

Lassiter’s acclaimed 2006 EP Witness draws upon his own journey through a five-year period that left him spiritually and emotionally disconnected from the creative outlets that previously sustained, nourished, and inspired him: no music, writing, acting or photography. The collection of earthy, organic-soul songs garnered attention around the globe and ushered in a flurry of performing activity. However, his return-to-form was interrupted by a much more dire circumstance when Lassiter was hospitalized with life-threatening pneumonia in 2008. If given a chance to return to singing, he vowed to release the music that lay inside him.

Music Outside in 2016 was the resulting second album, premised on capturing and synthesizing the disparate influences from his early years that shaped his musical style.

Born in the South Bronx, Lassiter was exposed to soul and 60’s folk music while moving around the neighborhoods of that New York City borough in his first decade of life. Just before turning 12, he moved to the idyllic suburbs of Pennsylvania to live with his maternal grandmother, who took care of Derek and his siblings until becoming gravely ill. While she introduced him to Gospel at church andCountry/Western on her kitchen radio, it was Lassiter’s teen years in the foster-home system that further exposed him to an ever-increasing range of musical genres.After putting himself through college, Lassiter eventually settled in San Francisco, where he fronted several bands in the early 90’s and played many of the local clubs, including Slim’s, Great American Music Hall, Cafe du Nord and numerous intimate venues and private events. In 2010 he moved to Oakland to further explore variety int he art and music scene.