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| SummerStage Features FREE Jazz Shows all Summer Long! City Parks Foundation is proud to announce the 2016 season of SummerStage, New York City's largest free performing arts festival, bringing more than 100 free performances to Central Park and 15 neighborhood parks throughout the five boroughs. With performances ranging from American pop, Yiddish Soul, and Taiwanese music to dance, comedy and theater, SummerStage will feature more than 200 unique artists, filling a vital niche in New York City's summer arts landscape, ensuring that New Yorkers will have access to exceptional cultural experiences, free of charge. Since its inception 31 years ago, SummerStage has benefited more than six million people from New York City and around the world. Having highlighted hip-hop music and culture in 2013 and salsa and Latin music in 2014, the festival is thrilled this year to honor another distinctly New York musical form: Jazz. The 2016 season of SummerStage will both showcase exceptional performing artists from around the globe, and will also feature more jazz performances than ever before, with nearly half a dozen planned for Central Park and many more in neighborhood parks across the city. The focus on jazz this season coincides with the upcoming centennial of the musical dawning of the term "jazz, " as well as what would have been the 100th birthdays of late jazz greats including Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Ella Fitzgerald. New York City has been the home to jazz's greatest legends and hosted some of the genre's finest moments. This summer, as an ode to the music that is interwoven with the fabric of our city, that tradition will continue in 8 different parks around the city. From bluesy jazz to funky jazz to orchestral jazz, this season has got it all. Living jazz legends McCoy Tyner, Ron Carter, and Roy Haynes will kick off the festival in Central Park on June 4, with the first free show of the season. Other notable performances will include the acclaimed saxophonist Kamasi Washington, also in Central Park; multiple GRAMMY-winning jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard in Staten Island's Clove Lakes Park performing Breathless, a work based on the final words of borough native Eric Garner; pre-eminent soul jazz vocalist and winner of the 2015 GRAMMY for Best Jazz Vocal Album, Dianne Reeves, in Queensbridge Park; and Stefanie Batten Bland presenting an interdisciplinary dance collaboration with jazz ensemble Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber also in Queensbridge Park. The annual, three-day Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, New York City's annual salute to the late saxophonist, will feature performances from Jason Lindner: Breeding Ground, the electrifying 11-piece band led by keyboardist Jason Lindner, the Randy Weston African Rhythms Sextet, led by the visionary Randy Weston that will delve into the African roots of jazz, and finally DeJohnette - Moran - Holland, the collaboration of influential jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette, innovative pianist Jason Moran, and prolific double bassist Dave Holland. The final free show of the 2016 season will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the hit Jazz Age Broadway musical, Chicago, with performances from the current cast. The complete SummerStage schedule of Jazz performances follows. For the most up-to-date scheduling and line-up for all SummerStage programming, follow SummerStage via the below links and visit www.SummerStage.org for festival information. Twitter: @SummerStage Instagram: @SummerStage Facebook: SummerStage NYC About City Parks Foundation City Parks Foundation is the only independent, nonprofit organization whose mission is to offer programs in public parks throughout the five boroughs of New York City. At City Parks Foundation, we are dedicated to invigorating and transforming parks into dynamic, vibrant centers of urban life through sports, arts, community development, and education programs for all New Yorkers. Our programs and community building initiatives - located in more than 300 parks, recreation centers, and public schools across the city - reach 425, 000 people each year. Our ethos is simple: we believe thriving parks reflect thriving communities. SummerStage Artist Information Saturday, June 4 The Legends Honor McCoy: McCoy Tyner Quartet / Ron Carter / Roy Haynes, in association with Blue Note Jazz Festival Central Park, MN 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM McCoy Tyner’s blues-based piano style, replete with sophisticated chords and an explosively percussive left hand has transcended conventional styles to become one of the most identifiable sounds in improvised music. His harmonic contributions and dramatic rhythmic devices form the vocabulary of a majority of jazz pianists. At 17 he began a career-changing relationship with Miles Davis’ sideman saxophonist John Coltrane. Tyner joined Coltrane for the classic album My Favorite Things (1960), and remained at the core of what became one of the most seminal groups in jazz history, The John Coltrane Quartet. Tyner’s name was propelled to international renown, as he developed a new vocabulary that transcended the piano styles of the time, providing a unique harmonic underpinning and rhythmic charge essential to the group’s sound. After over five years with Coltrane’s quartet, Tyner left the group to explore his destiny as a composer and bandleader. His 1972 Grammy-award nominated album Sahara, broke new ground by the sounds and rhythms of Africa. He has since released nearly 80 albums, been awarded Jazz Master from the National Endowment for the Arts, and has earned four Grammys. MGerald Cannon - Bass Joe Farnsworth - Drums Sherman Irby - Sax Ron Carter is among the most original, prolific, and influential bassists in jazz. With more than 2, 000 albums to his credit, he has recorded with many of music's greats: Tommy Flanagan, Gil Evans, Lena Horne, Bill Evans, B.B. King, the Kronos Quartet, Dexter Gordon, Wes Montgomery, and Bobby Timmons. After touring in the early 1960s, he became a member of the classic and acclaimed Miles Davis Quintet. Currently, after 18 years on the faculty of the Music Department of The City College of New York, he is now a Distinguished Professor Emeritus. In addition to teaching, arranging music, lecturing, conducting, and writing two books, Carter remains as active as ever as a performer. Carter is a two-time Grammy winner and has been named Outstanding Bassist of the Decade by the Detroit News, Jazz Bassist of the Year by Downbeatmagazine, and Most Valuable Player by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Other distinctions include two honorary doctorates from the New England Conservatory of Music and the Manhattan School of Music, France’s Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters medallion and title, and he was named the 2002 recipient of the prestigious Hutchison Award from the Eastman School at the University of Rochester. Roy Haynes is the pulse of legendary jazz. For over 50 years Roy Haynes has influenced and innovated, shaping some of the greatest recordings in jazz while his joyous drumming with the legends of the genre altered the very fabric and direction of jazz improvisation. Louis Armstrong. Lester Young. Charlie Parker. Thelonious Monk. Sarah Vaughan. Miles Davis. John Coltrane. Dizzy Gillespie. Bud Powell. Ella Fitzgerald. Stan Getz. Chick Corea. Pat Metheny. The list goes on and on as does Roy’s unflagging energy and marvelous invention. With his latest group of 20-something cohorts, Roy sends his “Hard Swing” to a timeless place. Haynes elevates the performances of his FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH BAND matching fire stroke for fire stroke, thrill for thrill, a tremendous give and take between the generations fueled by masterful musicianship and youthful abandon. Saturday, June 18 Kamasi Washington, in association with Blue Note Jazz Festival Central Park, MN 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM At the age of 13, Kamasi Washington started a lifelong quest discovering the many wonders of music. Within two years at the prestigious Hamilton High School Music Academy, Kamasi earned the lead tenor saxophone chair in the top jazz ensemble and joined the Multi School Jazz Band (MSJB). During his senior year of high school, Kamasi formed his first band, The Young Jazz Giants, with childhood friends including Ronald Bruner, Stephen Bruner and Cameron Graves. After high school, Kamasi received a full scholarship to study ethnomusicology at UCLA, where he explored many of the non-western musical cultures around the world. During the summer after his freshman year, Kamasi recorded his first album with The Young Jazz Giants to spread new sounds of jazz all around the country. In his second year at UCLA, Kamasi went on his first national tour with the west coast hip-hop legend Snoop Dogg. Later that year, Kamasi joined the orchestra of one of his biggest heroes, Gerald Wilson, and later went on his first international tour with R&B legend Raphael Saadiq. Over the years, Kamasi has performed and recorded with many of his musical heroes from various genres, including Gerald Wilson, McCoy Tyner, Freddie Hubbard, Kenny Burrell, George Duke, Lauryn Hill, Jeffrey Osborne, Mos Def, Quincy Jones, Stanley Clark, Harvey Mason and Chaka Khan. Kamasi’s own band The Next Step is a modern spin on a big band, which includes two drummers, two upright bass players, keyboard players, three horns players, a pianist, and a vocalist. In addition, Kamasi is part of a west coast musical collective called the West Coast Get Down. Most recently, Kamasi worked on Kendrick Lamar’s acclaimed 2015 album To Pimp A Butterfly. On May 5, 2015, Kamasi released his groundbreaking solo album The Epic on the trendsetting record label Brainfeeder. The Epic is a 172-minute, triple-disc masterpiece, featuring Kamasi’s ten-piece band The Next Step along with a full string orchestra and full choir. The Epic debuted #1 on several iTunes Jazz chart write your comments about the article :: © 2016 Jazz News :: home page |