|
||||||||||
| 104 E. 126th Street • Suite 2D • New York, NY 10035 | ||||||||||
|
News :: Press Releases FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 3/21/08 Download as a PDF Jazz Museum Events, March 25-29, 2008
Last evening, pianist Geri Allen broke it down in sound, discussing her early life and career, from Detroit to New York to Pennsylvania and around the world. Her family, peers, influences and mentors, and junior high and high school memories were the topics of discussion of part one; after intermission, she delved into her recordings, her teachers, and her time at the Barry Harris Workshop, so significant in her development. Armed with a Master’s in Ethnomusicology, she explicated the specific elements and aspects of the African influence on and in jazz. She also gave a superlative explanation of the whys and wherefores of the profound value of learning standards in the jazz canon, and the American songbook, as foundations for exploring the inner world of composers and for one’s own compositional and improvisational forays. Then, to all our great surprise and appreciation, she played a several part invention that combined her original conception with repeated references to the melody of a Bud Powell bebop tune. See Geri Allen live and NJ PAC on March 29th: http://www.njpac.org/all_events.asp?viewcode=2 The events listed at the top of this release continue the continuum of swing that the National Jazz Museum in Harlem presents every single week. We close out the Jazz and Poetry series for the Jazz for Curious Listeners program this month with poets who use jazz and other musical genres in their work, namely Jayne Cortez and Sonia Sanchez. Bill Mays and the Inventions Trio will scintillate, melding jazz and European classical music for Harlem in the Himalayas at the Rubin Museum of Art. And young, vigorous trumpeter Jumaane Smith will play his horn, and also relate his take on jazz performance and jazz education. His band experiences (including tours with pop/jazz vocalist Michael Bublè) will be another basis of engagement with the young people taking the Saturday Harlem Speaks Education Initiative course at the Harlem School of the Arts. Cancelled Class: The originally scheduled March 22, 2008 Harlem Speaks Education Initiative class, featuring Walter Blanding Jr., has been cancelled. The Harlem School of the Arts will be closed for Easter weekend. Tuesday, March 25, 2008 JAZZ FOR CURIOUS LISTENERS Come join us and Poet E.J. Antonio as we end our journey into Jazz and Poetry with the recordings of Jayne Cortez & The Firespitters and Sonia Sanchez. Attention will be given to how their work looks on the written page; how it sounds without music, and how it sounds when they add their lyrical and improvisational styles to create conversation between poet and musician, between music and words. What's a little a this and a little a that? Come out and join us to see what else E.J. has planned. Friday, March 28, 2008 HARLEM IN THE HIMALAYAS The Inventions Trio is comprised of pianist Bill Mays, trumpeter/flugelhornist Marvin Stamm, and cellist Alisa Horn. Mays and Stamm are classically-trained jazz masters of the piano and trumpet who have joined with a marvelously gifted and classically-trained cellist to explore the intersection of chamber music and jazz, to “find the chamber music in jazz and the jazz in chamber music,” performing fresh interpretations of well-known classical themes, jazz classics, and original works. The Inventions Trio grew out of Mays and Stamm’s long association and duo work together, followed by a commission of Mays’ three-movement Fantasy for Cello, Trumpet & Piano. Another inspiration was Mays’ duo work with flutist Bud Shank in 1980 that resulted in the Concord Records LP, Explorations, which featured Mays’ Suite for Flute and Piano and improvisations on classical themes. In the 1990s Mays mixed musical genres again by orchestrating The Nutcracker Suite for Jazz City Records. Written for four woodwinds and rhythm section, the CD featured movements from the Nutcracker and other well-known themes by Bach, Chopin, Debussy, Ravel and Rachmaninoff. In recent years, Mays teamed with members of the Finisterra and the Philadelphia Piano Quartets to play his jazz versions of Arensky, Dvorak, Mendelssohn, Rodrigo, and Vivaldi. In Mays’ words: “whether playing Borodin or Bird, Bach or bop, the aim is to make the music come alive in a new way, find great melodies, be true to the composer’s underlying harmonic scheme, let the music swing, listen intently, play honestly, always honoring the rich traditions from which we’re drawing and building upon.”
Saturday, March 29, 2008 HARLEM SPEAKS EDUCATION INITIATIVE Jumaane Smith is lead trumpeter for The Juilliard Jazz Orchestra. He has performed with such artists as Wynton Marsalis, Wycliffe Gordon, Jon Faddis, Bobby Short, Herb Jeffries, Clark Terry, Percy Heath and Loren Schoenberg, among many others, for instance pop/jazz singer Michael Buble. He has performed at The Montreux Jazz Festival, The North Sea Jazz Festival, and others. He is a highly versatile musician and his performance, composition and arranging credits range from Jazz to Classical.
This press release was composed and edited by Greg Thomas. The National Jazz Museum in Harlem has been ensconced in its Harlem offices for over five years now; its public programs now attract several thousand people a year. The Victoria Theatre on 125th Street will be redeveloped and includes space (10,150 sq. feet) for the museum! If you would like to receive updates on our progress or further information, please contact us online at http://www.jazzmuseuminharlem.org/contact.html or by phone at 212-348-8300. To find video clips, event summaries, program updates and photographs galore from our previous programs, venture here: www.jazzmuseuminharlem.org Coming in April . . . mark your calendar! JAZZ FOR CURIOUS LISTENERS explores the World of Herbie Hancock: HARLEM SPEAKS HARLEM IN THE HIMALAYAS JAZZ FOR CURIOUS READERS SPECIAL EVENT |
|||||||||
Rubin Museum of Art