By no means a secret, (and in steady demand,) but certainly in the category of IYKYK, multi-instrumentalist Aaron Shaw is one of Los Angeles’s brightest young Composers, Producers, Arrangers, Band Leaders, and Music Directors. In his Home Studio that he shares with his older Brother, Lawrence (together making up the group Black Nile), Shaw can be found playing Saxophones, Clarinets, Flutes, Keyboards, Drum Machines, and also Engineering Sessions. A frequent fixture at The World Stage in Leimert Park, Shaw has collaborated with everyone from Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, Phil Ranelin, Herbie Hancock, and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, to Mary J. Blige, Dave Chapelle, Tyler, The Creator, Anderson .Paak, Nightmares on Wax and many more less well known OG, established, emerging, and underground Artists in the LA Jazz, Hip-Hop, Rap, Electronic, and Experimental Music scenes. Born and raised in Ladera Heights, he cut his teeth at the Fernando Pullum Community Arts Center and the LA County High School for the Arts (LACHSA) before eventually entering the tutelage of Kamasi Washington, who he is featured with in tandem Musical conversation on the entirety of the 2025 release Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople. After years of study, dedication, and gig-work, the path to his first full-length release proved to be a perilous one. And So It Is, out February 13th on Leaving Records, documents the physical, musical, and spiritual transformation thrust upon an already extraordinary talent.

In 2023, at age 27, and after months of troubling symptoms and medical dead-ends, Shaw was diagnosed with bone marrow failure—a state of affairs he succinctly describes as “grim.” To say nothing of the alienation, exhaustion, and fear that accompanies such a diagnosis—the endless testing and treatment protocols—Shaw’s very capacity to play music, the craft to which he had consciously dedicated his life since the sixth grade, was suddenly, radically altered. The key matter was Shaw’s red blood cell count, and his incapacity to produce sufficient oxygen. Breath, the activating force of the wind instrument, was now in short supply. A once-normal gig became a medical gamble. How many stairs to the stage? Could he play in Idyllwild’s higher altitude?

The subsequent process of acceptance was fraught and non-linear (as major health journeys tend to be), characterized by periods of emotional exhaustion (crying spells, social isolation), as well as brave attempts to troubleshoot his limitations (experimenting with new mouthpieces and reeds, changing his posture). Initially frustrated by the resultant changes to his sound, Shaw pushed through. Playing music was still his primary source of solace. Through this self-therapy, and within the constraints of a new playing style, songs began to coalesce. “And So It Is,” a saying Shaw traces back to a childhood immersed in church music, became the mantra for this creative period, and eventually the collection’s title.

Under the nurturing eye of Leaving Record’s affiliate Carlos Niño (percussionist and, notably, the Producer for Andre 3000’s New Blue Sun) And So It Is slowly took shape—An eight song cycle that plums the depths of despair and isolation, as well as the strange clarity that comes from confronting one’s mortality. The aptly-titled first track, “Soul Journey” orients the listener. An initially off-kilter, ruminative, almost rainswept movement gives way to a more focused and propulsive mid-section (one senses grit here, a desire for forward momentum), before gradually laying down to a bed of cello and harp. And So It Is retains an inward focus throughout, and there are moments of transcendence, when the individual concerns plaguing Shaw seem to give way to pure delight in the discovery and expression of musical forms.

Shaw carefully selected his collaborators for this project, numerous and talented, including Lawrence Shaw and elder statesman Dwight Trible, among others. That track three, “Windows to the Soul,” is an interpretation of a Chick Corea composition, and that track eight, “Never Catch Me Out Of Alignment,” is sort of a cover of a Kendrick and Flylo collab, will intrigue and entertain old and new heads alike. And So It Is is a lovingly produced collaborative document of an artist at a crossroads who has chosen to proceed. Was it ever really a choice, even? While the future remains forever uncertain, for all of us, there is an infinite well-spring of hope and freedom and joy in doing what we do, and doing it well." - Emmet Shoemaker,