Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe at the UNITED
Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe at the UNITED in Westerly on Saturday, September 5, bringing a seven-piece collision of funk, soul, jazz and rock to one of the theater’s most intimate performance spaces.
The show begins at 8 p.m. in the UNITED Black Box Auditorium, with DELA & Steady Rock Easy opening the night. Floor tickets are $30 and general-admission standing room, while the $50 balcony offers reserved seating. Both prices include fees.
The size of the room is worth noting because Karl Denson is accustomed to considerably larger stages.
Since 2014, he’s been the touring saxophonist for the Rolling Stones.
But the Stones are only one part of a career that has connected Denson with Lenny Kravitz, Steve Winwood, The Greyboy Allstars, Slightly Stoopid and a remarkably long list of musicians stretching across jazz, funk, rock, soul and the jam-band world.
At the UNITED, he brings his own band.
And Tiny Universe has been doing this for more than 25 years.
The Call From the Rolling Stones
Karl Denson was already decades into his career when an unexpected opportunity arrived in 2014.
The Rolling Stones needed a saxophonist.
Bobby Keys, whose saxophone had become an important part of the Stones’ sound through performances including the famous solo on “Brown Sugar,” was ill and unable to tour.
Denson’s connection came through Lenny Kravitz.
Kravitz was having dinner with Mick Jagger when he learned that the Stones were looking for a saxophone player. He recommended Denson, who soon found himself talking with Jagger.
Denson got the job.
Within weeks, he was flying to Australia and New Zealand to play with the Rolling Stones.
Keys died in December 2014. Denson remained with the touring band, taking on a role that put him alongside Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood on stadium stages around the world.
More than a decade later, the Stones connection remains part of his musical life.
Tiny Universe remains something different.
Before the Stones, There Was Lenny Kravitz
Denson’s relationship with Kravitz went back much further.
He played saxophone on Kravitz’s early recordings and toured with him as the singer’s career took off around the turn of the 1990s.
That put Denson inside music that freely mixed rock, soul, funk and psychedelia rather than respecting clean genre boundaries.
It’s a philosophy that would follow him.
Denson could play jazz.
He could play funk.
He could step into rock.
He could play flute as comfortably as saxophone.
And rather than choosing one of those worlds, he built a career moving among them.
Then Came The Greyboy Allstars
In the early 1990s, Denson became a founding member of The Greyboy Allstars in San Diego.
The group emerged from the rare-groove and acid-jazz movement, drawing heavily from the funky soul-jazz of the 1960s and ’70s while developing its own improvisational identity.
The Greyboy Allstars became one of the defining bands of the West Coast groove scene and helped introduce a new audience to music that lived somewhere between a jazz club and a dance floor.
Denson never really abandoned that intersection.
He’s a jazz musician who doesn’t think jazz requires people to sit still.
Jazz You Can Dance To
That idea is essential to understanding Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe.
This isn’t smooth jazz.
It isn’t traditional bebop.
And it isn’t a conventional funk band with a saxophonist standing off to one side.
Improvisation is built into the music, but so is groove.
Tiny Universe can move through jazz, soul, funk, rock, R&B and psychedelic music within the same performance. Horn arrangements and solos coexist with heavy bass lines, keyboards, guitar and drums.
The musicians can stretch a song.
They can change direction.
They can follow an idea that wasn’t necessarily part of the plan when the song began.
But there’s another requirement.
It still has to move.
Denson even titled his 2001 album Dance Lesson #2.
The name wasn’t especially subtle.
Tiny Universe Has Been Doing This for More Than 25 Years
Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe has developed its reputation primarily onstage.
The band has performed around the world, including Japan’s Fuji Rock Festival.
It has played Madison Square Garden alongside Dave Matthews Band and James Brown.
Tiny Universe was the first late-night act at the inaugural Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in 2002, putting the band near the beginning of a festival culture that would become a natural home for its combination of improvisation and dance music.
New Orleans has become another important stop.
KDTU’s late-night shows around Jazz Fest have regularly turned into collaborative affairs, with musicians dropping in and the performances stretching deep into the night.
The list of people who have joined Denson over the years is formidable.
Steve Winwood.
Lenny Kravitz.
Maceo Parker.
Fred Wesley.
Warren Haynes.
John Oates.
Ivan Neville.
Lukas Nelson.
Marcus King.
Joshua Redman.
Bernie Worrell.
Rolling Stones keyboardist Chuck Leavell and vocalist Bernard Fowler have joined him as well.
That willingness to let musicians enter the Tiny Universe and alter its chemistry is part of the point.
The Band Has Shared the Road With Almost Everybody
The touring history tells the same story.
KDTU has toured with or appeared alongside acts including the Allman Brothers, My Morning Jacket, D’Angelo, The Roots, Public Enemy, Parliament-Funkadelic, Bob Weir, Slightly Stoopid and Widespread Panic.
In summer 2026 alone, Tiny Universe has appeared on bills involving Nile Rodgers & CHIC and major festival artists across funk, jazz, reggae and jam music.
The Westerly show falls during the band’s “Summer in September” run.
Denson and company play Maynard, Massachusetts, on September 2, followed by Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on September 3 and Brattleboro, Vermont, with Rebirth Brass Band on September 4.
Then comes Westerly on September 5.
The following day, Tiny Universe heads to New York for the Adirondack Independence Music Festival.
Yes, Karl Denson Was in Coming to America
There’s also a wonderfully strange detour in Denson’s résumé.
Sexual Chocolate.
In the 1988 Eddie Murphy comedy Coming to America, Murphy plays several characters, including spectacularly self-confident soul singer Randy Watson.
Watson’s band is Sexual Chocolate.
Denson was in it.
It could have remained a tiny piece of movie trivia from early in his career.
Instead, decades later, Denson resurrected the joke. Tiny Universe has performed as Sexual Chocolate, including a performance at San Francisco’s Outside Lands festival.
Denson also returned for the 2021 sequel Coming 2 America.
So the man playing saxophone in Westerly September 5 has been a member of both the Rolling Stones’ touring band and Sexual Chocolate.
There probably aren’t many résumés containing both.
Tiny Universe Has Its Own Catalog
The famous associations can obscure the fact that Tiny Universe has built a substantial body of its own music.
The band’s albums include Dance Lesson #2, The Bridge, Brother’s Keeper, New Ammo and Gnomes & Badgers.
The records reflect the same refusal to remain inside one musical lane.
Brother’s Keeper brought together musicians connected to The Dap-Kings, The Greyboy Allstars and Lenny Kravitz’s band, along with guests including Meshell Ndegeocello.
New Ammo combined Denson’s originals with dramatically reworked material from other artists. The album includes the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” and Beastie Boys’ “Sure Shot.”
That’s another recurring Tiny Universe idea.
A cover doesn’t have to be a reproduction.
Prince, Beastie Boys and the Stones All Enter the Universe
Over the years, Denson has built entire performances around interpreting other artists.
Tiny Universe has tackled music associated with Prince, Ray Charles, Beastie Boys, Run-DMC and the Rolling Stones.
The concept isn’t impersonation.
Denson takes familiar material and rearranges it for the musicians standing onstage with him.
A hip-hop track can become live funk.
A rock song can acquire horns and extended improvisation.
A familiar composition can be pulled apart and rebuilt until it sounds like Tiny Universe.
That same approach appears on the band’s studio albums.
It’s one reason a KDTU set can accommodate an original composition, a funk workout and an unexpected cover without sounding like three different bands have taken the stage.
Gnomes & Badgers Brought Some Famous Friends Along
Tiny Universe’s Gnomes & Badgers pushed the collaboration even further.
Denson brought in a group of guests that reflected the musical territory he’s occupied throughout his career.
Lukas Nelson participated.
So did New Orleans musician Ivan Neville.
Guitarist Anders Osborne joined the project.
Adrian Quesada, known for his work with Grupo Fantasma and Black Pumas, contributed.
And Chuck Leavell brought another Rolling Stones connection. In addition to his decades with the Stones, Leavell played with the Allman Brothers Band during one of its defining periods.
The album wasn’t an attempt to choose between rock, jazz, soul and funk.
It was an argument that the choice isn’t necessary.
The Current Tiny Universe
The current touring lineup surrounds Denson with horns, guitar, keyboards and a rhythm section capable of moving between tightly arranged funk and open improvisation.
Karl Denson handles saxophone, flute and vocals.
Ricio Fruge plays trumpet and sings.
Ricky Giordano plays guitar and contributes vocals.
Rashon Murph is on keyboards.
Parker McAllister plays bass.
Alfred Jordan handles drums.
Danielle Barker adds vocals.
It’s a seven-piece configuration with enough firepower to operate as a horn-driven funk band while retaining the flexibility that has always defined KDTU.
DELA & Steady Rock Easy Opens the Night
The opening band isn’t an arbitrary addition to the bill.
Daniel “DELA” Delacruz has his own history with Denson.
Delacruz is the saxophonist for Slightly Stoopid and spent years on the road with Denson, whom he describes as a longtime friend and mentor.
Eventually those connections produced a record.
Delacruz, Denson and members of Los Angeles reggae band The Aggrolites collaborated on Opening Night, a jazz-influenced reggae album released through Stoopid Records in 2017.
After returning from California to the Northeast, Delacruz assembled DELA & Steady Rock Easy.
And the musicians he recruited come with impressive résumés of their own.
Trombonist Brian Thomas has played with John Brown’s Body.
Trumpeter Mark Berney has connections to The Skatalites.
Guitarist Steve Fell has worked with Marco Benevento.
Bassist Aaron Bellamy comes from The A-Beez and the Sam Kininger Band.
Drummer Jesse Hayes has played with The Toasters.
Keyboardist Cameron Greenlee also has ties to The Skatalites and Naya Rockers.
The result is jazz musicianship applied to reggae, ska and groove.
Which makes considerably more sense once Karl Denson takes the stage.
From Stadiums to the Black Box
The UNITED’s Black Box Auditorium changes the scale considerably.
Denson can spend part of his year performing on enormous stages with the Rolling Stones.
On September 5, he’ll be inside the restored UNITED Theatre at 5 Canal Street in downtown Westerly.
The Black Box is designed to put the audience much closer to the performers than a traditional arena or large theater.
For this show, the floor is entirely general-admission standing room.
Anyone who wants a seat needs a balcony ticket.
That standing-room configuration may also be the more natural way to experience a band whose leader has spent decades insisting that jazz and dancing belong in the same room.
Because Tiny Universe isn’t really designed to be observed politely from a distance.
It’s designed to move.
Event Details
Event: Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe
Date: Saturday, September 5, 2026
Doors: 7 p.m.
Show: 8 p.m.
Location: UNITED Black Box Auditorium
Address: 5 Canal Street, Westerly, RI 02891
Headliner: Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe
Support: DELA & Steady Rock Easy
Music: Funk, soul, jazz, rock and improvisational groove
Age Restriction: All ages
Floor Tickets: $30, fees included
Floor Seating: General-admission standing room only; no seats
Balcony Tickets: $50, fees included
Balcony Seating: Reserved seating
Ticket Policy: Tickets are non-refundable and non-transferable
Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe Touring Band
Karl Denson — saxophone, flute and vocals
Ricio Fruge — trumpet and vocals
Ricky Giordano — guitar and vocals
Rashon Murph — keyboards
Parker McAllister — bass
Alfred Jordan — drums
Danielle Barker — vocals
Further reading:
More information is available at the Event Website link below.
To purchase tickets, click the Event Ticketing link below.
Featured image is an artistic representation inspired by the event and may not depict the actual people, location, or activities shown.