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| 2016 Charlie Parker Jazz Festival City Parks Foundation is proud to announce the 2016 Charlie Parker Jazz Festival. The festival is New York City's annual salute to the legendary saxophonist, featuring contemporaries of Charlie Parker as well as young jazz musicians that continue to shape and drive the art form. In a world of modern music - not just jazz - few figures loom as large or cast as long a shadow as saxophonist Charlie Parker, best known as "Bird" (short for "Yardbird") to generations of musicians. He was born in 1920 and almost sixty years since his death in 1955, he is universally celebrated for single-handedly inventing bebop and bringing jazz into the modern era. The festival is particularly significant this year given 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. This year's festival will feature performances on August 26 and 27 in Marcus Garvey Park, Harlem and August 28 in Tompkins Square Park in the East Village. On the 26th, audiences can enjoy performances from Jason Lindner: Breeding Ground, the electrifying 11-piece band led by keyboardist Jason Lindner and jazz vocalist Antoinette Montague, accompanied by Jazzmobile friends. Randy Weston African Rhythms Sextet will play jazz infused with influences of African culture, while jazz pianist and gospel musician Cory Henry will wow audiences with his full band sound on the 27th. August 28th, audiences will be introduced to DeJohnette - Moran - Holland, the first-time collaboration of influential jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette, innovative pianist Jason Moran, and prolific double bassist Dave Holland. Listeners will be delighted by performances from award winning jazz vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter Allan Harris and acclaimed saxophonist Donny McCaslin, who will perform his newest album accompanied by his group. New this year, the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival will feature film screenings at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music's Jazz Performance Space. "The Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story, " will show on August 24th and feature a post-film discussion with alto sax star and Frank's protege Grace Kelly, and Frank's manager Reggie Marshall. "Bill Evans: Time Remembered" will be screened on the 25th, featuring a post-film discussion with the producer Bruce Spiegel. 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. Wednesday, August 24 Screening: The Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music's Jazz Performance Space, MN 7:30 PM – 9:30 PM Post-film discussion alto sax star and Frank's protege Grace Kelly, and Frank's manager Reggie Marshall. In the new documentary, SOUND OF REDEMPTION: THE FRANK MORGAN STORY, director NC Heikin recreates the life of Frank Morgan in concert form, tracing his progress from teenage musical prodigy to hardcore junkie and, finally, to one of the music world's most remarkable comeback stories. A one-night-only, all-star musical tribute filmed live at San Quentin forms the backbone of a film that brings together the past, present and future of Morgan's musical legacy. Moving seamlessly between the thrilling live performance and the riveting true story of a musician whose talent first destroyed and then redeemed him, the award-winning filmmaker paints a searingly honest portrait of a prodigiously gifted, tragically flawed musical genius. RSVP Required, CharlieParker@CityParksFoundation.org. Thursday, August 25 Screening: Bill Evans: Time Remembered The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music's Jazz Performance Space, MN 7:30 PM – 9:30 PM Post-film discussion with the producer Bruce Spiegel. Bruce Spiegel has produced a complete documentary giving you insights into Bill Evans; not just the musician, but also the person. The film moves chronologically starting with Bill's childhood in New Jersey and culminating with details about his death. "The film Bill Evans, Time Remembered took me 8 years to make. Eight years of tracking down anybody who knew Bill and who played with him, to try and find out as much as I could about the illusive and not easy to understand Bill Evans. I feel very honored to have had the chance to interview and get to know good guys that spent a lot of time with Bill: Billy Taylor, Gene Lees, Tony Bennett, Jack DeJohnette, Jon Hendricks, Jim Hall, Bobby Brookmeyer, Chuck Israels, Paul Motian, Gary Peacock, Joe LaBarbera. It was a once in a life time experience talking to these gifted talented guys about their time in jazz music, about their "Time Remembered" with Bill Evans. – Bruce Spiegel" RSVP Required, CharlieParker@CityParksFoundation.org. Friday, August 26 Jason Lindner: Breeding Ground / Antoinette Montague and Jazzmobile Friends /DJ Greg Caz Marcus Garvey Park, MN 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM Breeding Ground combines the two most successful projects of New York-bred pianist Jason Lindner: Now Vs. Now, his propulsive groove trio with bassist Panagiotis Andreou and drummer Mark Guiliana; and his big band, which started at the Greenwich Village basement club Smalls twenty years ago. Created in 2009 by a commission from the Jazz Gallery and the Jerome Foundation, the 11-piece Breeding Ground ensemble finds Andreou and Guiliana in the engine room, with Lindner on more piano than synths, leaving room for a string section, a horn section, and singer-songwriter Jeff Taylor as the featured vocalist. Electro-acoustic, poly-rhythmic, cross-pollinated, dirty and mixed up, improvised and composed, multi-formatted and ever shifting, Breeding Ground is the epitome of liquid modernity. Their debut full-length album will be released in 2016. Born and raised in Newark, New Jersey, Antoinette Montague grew up listening to Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. "I was singing and humming from an early age. It was how I created my own private, comforting world." Early in her career she was mentored by vocalists Etta Jones and Carrie Smith, and you can often hear their influences when she takes to the bandstand. Montague has performed onstage with many top jazz and blues musicians including Red Holloway, Benny Powell, Earl May, Winard Harper, Wycliffe Gordon, Stan Hope, John di Martino, Bernard Purdy, Victor Jones, Tootsie Bean, Zeke Mullins, Paul Bollenback, Frank Wess, and others. Headlining her own gigs, Antoinette has performed on the Jazzmobile stage in Harlem, Birdland, Jazz at Lincoln Center's Dizzy's Club-Coca Cola, Kitano Jazz, the Blue Note, Jazz Standard clubs and concert halls in Russia and more. Antoinette's album, Behind The Smile features a diverse repertoire of standards and originals including "What's Going On, " "The Song Is You, " "Get Ready, " "Somewhere In The Night" as well the vocalist/composer's original title song "Behind The Smile." Her latest album is World Peace in the Key of Jazz! DJ Greg Caz has been spinning around New York since the early 1990s. He made a name for himself during his long stint at Black Betty (R.I.P.) in Williamsburg, where he co-hosted Brazilian Beat Sundays – a raucous DJ night of 1970s Brazilian dance music that inspired two mix CDs, Baile Funk, Vols. 1 & 2. Caz caught the "sweet sickness” of record collecting at a young age and owns crates and crates of funk, soul, rare grooves, reggae, jazz, golden-era hip hop, Latin music, ’70s soft rock and African music. He has long been a resident DJ at Nublu in the East Village, and recently provided lyric translations for the reissue of four Marcos Valle albums on Light in the Attic records. He has appeared in London, Brazil, Germany, Austria, Scotland, Ireland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington DC, Chicago, Montreal and elsewhere. Saturday, August 27 Randy Weston African Rhythms Sextet / Cory Henry & The Funk Apostles / The Artistry of Jazzmeia Horn / Charles Turner III / Master Class: Samuel Coleman Marcus Garvey Park, MN 3:00 PM – 7:00 PM 2:00 PM - Master Class Randy Weston received a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship for Music Composition that enabled him to compose An African Nubian Suite, a major new work for jazz orchestra. The piece is based on his lifelong research on and interest in the culture, heritage and music of Africa. Weston notes: " An African Nubian Suite is a testament to the profound effect my African heritage has had on my life. I hope it will also be my message to others to help them know and feel proud of this heritage, that when I play the work, our common heritage will touch and inspire my audience. It is a labor of love to the culture, the people and the music that has so inspired and informed my life." In 2014, Randy Weston received a Doris Duke Artist Award. This will allow him to compose a new work, Seven African Queens, and travel to Morocco to document the traditional music of the Gnawa. You might know Cory Henry as an in-demand, multi-instrumentalist and producer who’s worked with an array of musical legends across genres, including Yolanda Adams, Sara Bareilles, P. Diddy, Kirk Franklin, Kenny Garrett, Robert Glasper, Derrick Hodge, Shaun Kingston, Donald Lawrence, Michael McDonald, Boyz II Men, NAS, Bruce Springsteen, The Roots and as a member of the Gramm write your comments about the article :: © 2016 Jazz News :: home page |