St. Paul-based multidisciplinarian Davu Seru has worked with numerous improvising musicians and composers throughout the United States and France. He is composer, drummer and bandleader for No Territory Band and a member of Trio SDS with French musicians Guilluame Seguron and Catherine Delaunay and Black Praxis Band with Chicago-based musicians David Boykin and Eliel Sherman Storey. He spent his formative years in Chicago among musicians of the Associated Advancement of Creative Musician (AACM) and in with Minneapolis-based avant-garde jazz legend Milo Fine. For the year 2017-2018 he served as the first-ever composer-in-residence at Studio Z in Saint Paul. Davu has also received awards from the Jerome Foundation (2017-18 Composer/Sound Artist Fellow), American Composers Forum (Minnesota Emerging Composer Award), the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (Next Step Fund) and has received commissions from the Zeitgeist Ensemble and Walker Art Center. In addition to his musical pursuits, Davu is a published author and a professor of English and African American literature and culture at Hamline University.
His collaborators include Evan Parker, Jim Baker, Nicole Mitchell, David Boykin, Wayne Horvitz, Bill Horvitz, Rafael Toral, Didier Petit, Francois Corneloup, Tony Hymas, Tomeka Reid, Mankwe Ndosi, Andrew Lafkas, Thollem McDonas, Charles Gillet, Viv Corringham, Carol Genetti, Anthony Cox, Carei Thomas, Douglas Ewart, Faye Washington, Michael Lewis, Jamal Moore, Donald Washington, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Phillip Greelief, Frank Gratkowski, Robbie Hunsinger, Tatsu Aoki, JT Bates, Harrison Bankhead, Dave Rempis, Jack Wright and Milo Fine.