Maxwell on opening act, hope for Silent Serenade Ensemble: ‘The goal is to get [people] closer to who they are’

Maxwell has officially kicked off his Silent Serenade Ensemble, a limited experience offering reimagined arrangements of his songs backed by live percussion and a string quartet. He teams with opening act Yola for the trek and describes what made her a perfect fit for his show.

“She is the epitome of genre blending, seamless genre blending. And not to mention her voice, her presence, her Black beauty,” Maxwell tells ABC Audio. “And he’s doing it, and she’s been successful with it.”

He says he discovered Yola years ago during her performance on a late-night talk show.

“It was during the pandemic, so there was no audience. … And I was like, damn … she cooking,” he says. “She is everything that they’re telling you not to do. And it’s working. And it’s beautiful.”

Maxwell adds that he admires “when people like that have the audacity to be themselves” and notes he was eager to “work with someone like that who had that audacity and courage, not ego, but just the courage to be themselves in that way.”

Maxwell’s Silent Serenade Ensemble runs through Saturday at the MGM National Harbor in the Washington metropolitan area, with a final show on Sept. 28 at Kings Theatre in Brooklyn. He says it’s a place for people who “are looking for feeling” and who want to “hear arrangements that celebrate the magnitude and the scope of what they are.”

“I hope they find themselves in every moment. I hope they find a part of who they are that they never were ready to be. I hope that they can come to appreciate themselves in ways that they never thought they could,” he says of his shows. “The goal is to just get them closer to who they are.”