Friday, February 1, 2013

Harlem in the Himalayas

John Raymond Ensemble

7:00pm
Location: Rubin Museum of Art
(150 West 17th Street)
$20/Door $18/Advance $16.20/Members| For more information: rmanyc.org

John Raymond, trumpet, flugelhorn
Sullivan Fortner, piano
Linda Oh, bass
Austin Walker, drums

John Raymond - New-York based trumpeter, composer, horn arranger, and educator - is an up-and-coming artist that is well on his way to becoming a major force in the music industry. A finalist in the 2009 National Trumpet Competition, John has performed as a leader and sideman at many of the nation's top venues including Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola (New York, NY), the Dakota Jazz Club (Minneapolis, MN), the Jazz Showcase (Chicago, IL) and the Blue Note Jazz Club (New York, NY). He has performed with notable jazz musicians such as Maria Schneider, Chris Potter, John Abercrombie and Lewis Nash. In addition to performing throughout the United States, John has also toured internationally to the Dominican Republic, China, the United Kingdom & Ireland. John has also distinguished himself as an elite horn arranger, evidenced by the three Grammy-nominated songs that he has arranged and recorded horns for (by R&B artists Ann Nesby & Calvin Richardson, respectively).

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Jazz for Curious Listeners

Black History Month: The Women
Ethel Waters

7:00 - 8:30pm
Location: Metropolitan Community United Methodist Church
1975 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10035 (corner of 126th Street)
FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300

We celebrate Black History Month by focusing on four women who broke boundaries by their sheer genius and talent. Please join us for these evening programs where you will not only hear great music, but learn something new about these American icons. Ethel Waters was not only an innovative jazz singer (recording before Louis Armstrong), but also one of the great actresses of the 20th story. She was as broad an influence in her time as Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday. Waters's autobiography, His Eye Is On The Sparrow, will form the basis of our session.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Jazz for Curious Listeners

Black History Month: The Women
Mary Lou Williams

7:00 - 8:30pm
Location: Metropolitan Community United Methodist Church
1975 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10035 (corner of 126th Street)
FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300

We celebrate Black History Month by focusing on four women who broke boundaries by their sheer genius and talent. Please join us for these evening programs where you will not only hear great music, but learn something new about these American icons. Few jazz musicians accomplished anything near what Mary Lou Williams during her long and varied career, which spanned five decades. An accomplished composer/arranger/pianist, she wrote music for Dizzy Gillespie, Andy Kirk, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington. Be prepared to hear a wide range of fresh and vibrant music.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Jazz for Curious Listeners

Black History Month: The Women
Abbey Lincoln

7:00 - 8:30pm
Location: Metropolitan Community United Methodist Church
1975 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10035 (corner of 126th Street)
FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300

We celebrate Black History Month by focusing on four women who broke boundaries by their sheer genius and talent. Please join us for these evening programs where you will not only hear great music, but learn something new about these American icons. Abbey Lincoln gave up a promising career as a pin-up styled jazz singer in the mid-1950's to pursue a career exploring the depths of the African-American experience, in partnership with her husband Max Roach, and a long series of equally distinguished musical partners. She was also a composer of the first-water, as well as an exceptional, if occasional actress.

Abbey Lincoln began performing professionally in the early 1950s, using the names Anna Marie, Gaby Lee, and Gaby Wooldridge. In 1956, after taking the name Abbey Lincoln, she made her first recording, with Benny Carter's orchestra. Shortly afterwards, she recorded as the leader of a group that included Sonny Rollins and Max Roach. In the late 1950s she began writing songs and also started working as an actress. From 1962 to 1970 she was married to Roach, through whom she met many leading musicians, including Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus. At this time she was influenced by them to explore a wider range of vocal techniques, and began to use a richer poetic style and greater cultural and political content in her songs. She became a strong public advocate for racial equality, and this issue was reflected in her lyrics, and in the energy, boldness, and, at times, violence of her vocal style. In the late 1960s, her career as an actress took on new impetus, and she appeared in several films. In 1975, she visited Africa, where the names Aminata and Moseka were conferred upon her by politicians in Guinea and Zaire respectively. She continued to perform and tour in the mid-1980s and has returned to the warm, gentle style that characterized her early work.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Jazz at The Players

Jon Faddis and Friends

7:00pm
Location: The Players
(16 Gramercy Park South)
$20 | For more information: 212-475-6116

Jon Faddis is a complete and consummate musician - conductor, composer, and educator. Marked by both intense integrity and humor, Faddis earned accolades from his close friend and mentor John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie, who declared of Faddis, "He's the best ever, including me!" As a trumpeter, Faddis possesses a virtually unparalleled range and full command of his instrument, making the practically impossible seem effortless. Time Out New York (2003) praises Faddis as "the world's greatest trumpeter ... brash soloistic logic and breathtaking technical acuity," and Nat Hentoff, The Wall Street Journal, characterizes Faddis as "a trumpet player of prodigious lyrical force" (2005).

Born in 1953, Faddis began playing at age eight, inspired by an appearance by Louis Armstrong on television. Meeting Dizzy Gillespie at 15 proved to be a pivotal beginning of a unique friendship that spanned over three decades. Shortly after his 18th birthday, Faddis joined Lionel Hampton's band, moving from Oakland, CA to New York. Faddis worked as lead trumpet for the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra at the Village Vanguard, formed his own quartet, and soon began directing orchestras, including the Grammy-winning United Nation Orchestra, the Dizzy Gillespie 70th Birthday Big Band, the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band (1992-2002), and the Jon Faddis Jazz Orchestra of New York (2003-present). The Chicago Jazz Ensemble, celebrating its 40th anniversary at Columbia College Chicago in 2005-2006, named Faddis as its Artistic Director in autumn 2004. Faddis will continue to conduct both the JFJONY and the CJE in the future. Faddis has also served as guest conductor and featured guest with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.

Faddis' original compositions include the Jazz opera Lulu Noire (1997) (named a "Top 10" pick by USA Today); others may be heard on his Grammy-nominated Remembrances (Chesky), Into the Faddisphere (Epic), and Hornucopia (Epic). Faddis' forthcoming CD, TERANGA (KOCH Records, June 2006), features new compositions by the trumpeter, joined by members of the Jon Faddis Quartet - David Hazeltine (piano), Kiyoshi Kitagawa (bass), & Dion Parson (drums) - together with special guests Alioune Faye (sabor), Abdou Mboup (djembe & talking drum), Russell Malone (guitar), Gary Smulyan (baritone saxophone), Frank Wess (alto flute) and Clark Terry (flugelhorn & vocals).

Faddis remains true to the tradition of honoring mentors, regularly leading master classes and clinics worldwide, and also teaching as a full-time faculty member at the Conservatory of Music, Purchase College-SUNY (where he is Artist-in-Residence, Professor & Director of Jazz Performance) and as guest lecturer at Columbia College Chicago.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Jazz for Curious Listeners

Black History Month: The Women
Cassandra Wilson

7:00 - 8:30pm
Location: Metropolitan Community United Methodist Church
1975 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10035 (corner of 126th Street)
FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300

We celebrate Black History Month by focusing on four women who broke boundaries by their sheer genius and talent. Please join us for these evening programs where you will not only hear great music, but learn something new about these American icons. Unwilling to be a "standard" jazz singer, Wilson has forged her way into a unique musical persona that effortlessly blends a myriad of musical influences to forge an artistic world that is all her own. We'll trace her evolution through a series of historic recordings.

A month after Time Magazine named her America's Best Singer, Cassandra Wilson boarded a train in New York and headed to Mississippi to begin production on her latest Blue Note album, Belly of the Sun. Born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, Cassandra returned to her home-state with a few songs she'd written for the project, phone numbers of some Mississippi musicians and the faintest sketch of an idea that she hoped would lead her into the album and help her discover something new. The idea for the album was simply to return home and let the deep musical traditions of the area guide her.

Months before beginning production, she'd toyed with the idea of an all blues album that could be recorded in the Delta. But, Cassandra is never bound by an idea of what her music (or any music) should be. Working as both producer and performer she set out to create an environment for the music to come to her and then guided it through the recording process. For this album she knew that that environment needed to be Mississippi. "In my twenty years of recording, I'd never recorded an album in Mississippi. It was time. I felt it calling me home."

With a small group of local folks including her childhood friend, singer/songwriter Rhonda Richmond, Cassandra toured the Mississippi Delta for two weeks talking to people, remembering the smells and sounds of her childhood and scouting a location for the recording sessions. As she moved through the cities and small towns meeting musicians and thinking about the album, the idea of a blues album began to evolve into something else. It wasn't clear what yet, but she knew it was growing beyond the initial concept. "Mississippi is an almost magical place for music. In addition to the legacy that's there, great musicians are everywhere. In the smallest town you can find cats that are amazing players. Not just the blues, there are also funk players, soul singers, of course gospel singers, and like my father, some serious jazz musicians. For the most part the world outside of Mississippi has never heard of them."

Finally settling on the legendary Delta blues town Clarksdale, Cassandra rented the old train depot and over two days transformed it into a recording studio. Relying on her band (musical director/guitarist Marvin Sewell, guitarist Kevin Breit, percussionists Jeff Haynes and Cyro Baptista and bassist Mark Peterson) as the foundation, Cassandra was ready to begin. Under difficult conditions, including a scorching August heat, and working with her long-time engineer, Danny Kopelson, and a half dozen supporting staff, over the next few days she recorded 15 songs (two of them "Hot Tamales" and "You Gotta Move" were recorded in an abandoned box car after getting kicked out of the train station for a wedding reception.)

Starting with only two songs she'd written for the project ("Justice" and "Cooter Brown") Cassandra's ideas for the album were fueled by the intense creative environment that had been created. The first song recorded was "The Weight" which seemed appropriate to the task she'd taken upon herself. She pulled from her recent performing repertoire and recorded "Wichita Lineman" and the "Waters of March". The local blues piano legend Boogaloo Ames ambled in on 80-something year-old legs and sat down and played with timeless hands. Out of that collaboration came "Darkness on the Delta" and "Rock Me Baby". She added the African influenced "Little Lion" and James Taylor's Brazilian influenced "Only a Dream in Rio" with background vocals from Jackson singers (Jewell Bass, Vasti Jackson, Patrice Moncell and Henry Rhodes). She also included two songs by Mississippians, Rhonda Richmond's "Road So Clear" and with guitarist Jesse Robinson (who'd played with Cassandra's father Herman Fowlkes) Cassandra co-wrote "Show Me A Love."

"With the Miles project I had a clearer picture of what it would be. I wasn't so sure how this project would develop. As we began recording it was as if all that I'd learned about music growing up in Mississippi was pushing me forward. When I was a child my father taught me to listen to everything and I felt all of that coming back during those days in Clarksdale... the jazz albums he used to play for me, the blues that were always present in Mississippi, the importance of African influences in the culture and popular music, it all seemed present during those sessions. I'd heard a Yoruba translation of a lyric that said, 'We'll meet in the belly of the Sun'. And that was it. I knew that was where we were, in the hottest place literally and metaphorically in America, the Mississippi Delta, the Belly of the Sun."

With the Clarksdale sessions completed, Cassandra traveled back to New York to complete work on the album. The young soul singer India.Arie had mentioned Cassandra as an influence and wanted an opportunity to work with her and Cassandra had written a song ("Just Another Parade') she wanted to do with another singer. For a while she'd wanted to record the Bob Dylan song "Shelter From the Storm." The duet with India.Arie and the Dylan song were added in a New York studio. And then it was done.

Belly of the Sun is an exploration of influences, sounds, history and most of all the roots of American music and of Cassandra Wilson's life in Mississippi. It has that thing her growing legend of fans love, the unexpected shaping of a song to the spirit of the time by a singer and songwriter for this time. It has something else that is the trademark of a Cassandra Wilson project, the willingness to see, to feel and reach beyond any boundary to find something unusual and common in music and people.

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Harlem Speaks

Nate Chinen

6:30 - 8:30pm
Location: NJMH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2D)
FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300

Nate Chinen has been has been writing about jazz and pop for the New York Times since 2005. He has received multiple honors from the Jazz Journalists Association, including an award for Best Book About Jazz, for Myself Among Others: A Life in Music (2003), which he wrote with the impresario George Wein. Since 2004 he has been a columnist for JazzTimes.

Chinen writes about himself: "I was born and raised in Hawaii, a place where tradition and commerce coexist fruitfully, if not always agreeably. My parents were entertainers; much of my childhood was spent at the musicians union and in nightclubs. For some years I had designs on following in their footsteps, though writing also captivated me early on. Live music was a tangible thing for me long before recordings.

But I do remember the first albums that gripped me, many of them arriving in the mail from Columbia Records: "Ellington at Newport," "Monk's Dream," the CD reissue of Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and Sevens. "Kind of Blue," of course, and "A Love Supreme." A middle-school teacher made me a cassette of choice Charlie Parker cuts, which I wore out, but not before tracking down their sources. (These allegiances coexisted with a predictable set of others: A Tribe Called Quest, Nirvana, Hendrix, Zeppelin. Diversions, I thought at the time.)

There was a debate raging in the jazz world then, based on a dichotomy of history and progress. It was the so-called "Young Lion" era, a period of intensive canonization and backlash. The arguments interested me, but not half as much as the music. I saw Dizzy Gillespie and Freddie Hubbard, and met McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock. One of the shows I remember most vividly from those years was by the Branford Marsalis Quartet, with Kenny Kirkland: they played brutishly, as if the world was ending, but also with extreme refinement. A lot of their moves went over my head, which was thrilling.

Later, taking my first steps as a jazz critic in Philadelphia, I realized the challenge of articulating both the sound and the feeling of music, along with some kind of context. My training took place on the job, and I consider myself lucky to have landed in a city with serious history and a proud jazz constituency. For a time I was also working somewhat steadily as a musician there, which greatly deepened my perspective.

After moving to New York City in 1998, I wrote a book with the jazz impresario George Wein and worked for a few years in online media. In 2005 I began writing for the New York Times, where I continue to cover music -- not only jazz but also pop, as it's loosely defined.

I don't believe there's any fixed difference between writing about jazz and writing about the myriad variations on hip-hop, rock, R&B, or folkloric music. In every instance you address a history as well as the product of an objective, stated or implied. But it's more basic and intuitive than that. It's about how something resonates, and what it tells you, or at least tries to say."