Photo courtesy of Julius Rogers

On March 20, 2026, Julius Rogers released Double Standards, a concept EP recorded with pianist Tal Cohen and bassist Patrick Leavy. Four days later, on March 24, he performed the project live for the first time at the Miami Beach Bandshell, the open-air MiMo-era venue managed by the Rhythm Foundation for the City of Miami Beach, a presenter that has programmed more than 120 events each season since taking over the space in 2015 and was named Best Live Music Venue by Miami New Times in 2023. The timing is not accidental. Rogers designed both dates to work together, giving listeners a few days with the record before experiencing it in a room.

Double Standards is built around an original compositional concept. Rogers takes melodies and harmonies from different jazz standards and superimposes them on top of each other, not as an improvisation technique but as the structural foundation of each composition. The result is a body of work in which familiar elements become the raw material for something genuinely new. “Most people think of a mashup as a trick,” Rogers says. “What I wanted to do was use it as a serious compositional tool, the same way any composer uses existing forms and structures to build something original.”

Why This Is Harder Than It Sounds

Jazz harmony is not like pop harmony. Two songs written in the same key can still be incompatible for superimposition because their chord movements operate on different internal logics. Combining them without producing harmonic incoherence requires simultaneous command of both theoretical frameworks. Rogers’s ability to execute this at a compositional level rather than an improvisational one sets Double Standards apart from most genre-adjacent attempts at the same idea.

That command was developed, in large part, through his years at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, where he earned his Master of Music in Jazz Performance. His studies went deep enough into jazz theory and performance practice that he was appointed Teaching Assistant to Dafnis Prieto, a MacArthur Fellow and Grammy Award-winning drummer and composer on the faculty. Rogers also authored a musicological paper at Frost tracing the evolution of jazz drum-set cymbals over 110 years of the genre’s history, which he delivered as a university-level lecture.

A Deliberate Rejection of Formula

Rogers has been public about a concern that runs through his creative decisions. He sees contemporary music culture pushing artists toward producing for algorithms and engagement metrics rather than for artistic development, and he has chosen to build his work in the opposite direction. Double Standards was not designed to generate content for social platforms. It was designed to advance a compositional idea.

“There is always a version of this where you make the safer choice,” Rogers says. “You make the music that fits the moment and builds numbers. I am more interested in building a body of work that holds up. Double Standards is a real argument about how jazz composition can work, and I wanted to make that argument properly, with serious musicians, on record, and then play it live for an audience.” The Bandshell performance is the completion of that argument. It moves the project from a digital release into a documented, communal event, which is exactly where Rogers believes music should ultimately live.

The Career That Earned This Moment

Rogers’s path to this release has been years in the making. He relocated from Perth, Australia, to Miami to pursue graduate studies, and has since built a professional performing career in the city’s active jazz community, working regularly alongside Russ Spiegel, an internationally respected guitarist, and Electric Kif, one of Miami’s most regarded working bands. He was also selected for the JAS Academy Afro-Caribbean Workshop, led by Etienne Charles, a Trinidad-born trumpeter and composer celebrated for integrating Caribbean musical traditions into jazz, through the summer program operated by Jazz Aspen Snowmass, which is selective about who it brings in.

His 2022 debut album, Witching Hour, a noir-themed concept work, introduced his compositional voice to wider audiences through press coverage, radio play, and streaming platforms including Spotify and Apple Music. He was recognized as a finalist in the Bucharest International Jazz Competition, ranked among Europe’s top three jazz competitions and operating under the High Patronage of the Romanian Royal Family as part of EUROPAfest, placing him in formal competition with musicians from across the world. Double Standards is his most complete statement yet. The Bandshell was where Miami first heard it.