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| Vermont Jazz Center Presents Billy Childs - Sunday, Feb 9 at 4 pm The Vermont Jazz Center will present Billy Childs, one of the leading pianists, composers and arrangers of our time, on Sunday, February 9th at 4 PM. He will be performing with trumpeter Jason Palmer, bassist Matt Penman and drummer Ari Hoenig. They will be featuring material from their album The Winds of Change which won 2023's Best Instrumental Jazz Album of the Year Grammy Award. Billy Childs has earned seventeen Grammy nominations and six Grammy awards. He is also the recipient of Chamber Music America's Composer's Grant, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a music award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Several groups have commissioned Childs's orchestral compositions, including the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, and the American Brass Quintet. Jazz critic Don Heckman writes: "Words fail in an effort to describe the complexities and the subtleties of Childs's musical imagination which is far-reaching… Childs' works do not simply place genres side by side. Instead, they find a common, creative ground reminiscent of Rumi's 'community of spirit.'" Each one of Child's 20 albums as a leader is unique and presents thematic material that focuses on meaningful concepts and illuminates his intelligent and heartfelt approach. He has appeared on hundreds of recordings as a side person with such luminaries as J.J. Johnson, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, Wynton Marsalis, Renee Fleming, Yo-Yo Ma, Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland, Ron Carter, Gladys Knight, Chris Botti, Allan Holdsworth, Dianne Reeves, Grover Washington, Dori Caymmi, Lou Rawls, the Headhunters and Eddie Daniels. His recording, Map to the Treasure, Reimagining Laura Nyro, received two Grammy Awards and features Alison Krauss, Renée Fleming, Wayne Shorter and Diane Reeves. What is it that makes Billy Childs a significant artist and earns him the respect and admiration of his peers? It is a combination of natural talent and hard-earned ability, his facility on the piano, and his capacity to play and write anything that comes to his brilliant mind. But it is also his attitude and his belief that the arts can be used as a healing force to forge relations with disparate people and cultures. In an interview that spoke to a recently commissioned saxophone concerto he composed for Stephen Banks and the Minnesota Orchestra, Childs said: "…we are part of a long continuum that is humanity. And whether it's art, politics or science, the legacy of humanity is enormous, and we are all part of it. I feel that I have to do my best to contribute positively to it to ensure harmony with the planet and with other people. And it's all part of this large continuum that we call art, we call music." Childs deliberately shapes the arc of his arrangements to create interest and guide the listener through an emotional experience. In an interview that celebrated his inauguration as president of the board of directors of Chamber Music America, Childs stated: "My personal philosophy is that a beautiful melody, a strong melody, is a profound statement. It resembles a great sentence. It's the most compelling feature of a lot of music. In my music, I try, above all, to create something compelling. And I feel that once an audience is invested in a melody, once they can relate to that, you're free to be as complex and layered as you want underneath." Along with melodicism, another strong feature of Childs' approach is his ability to blend seemingly disparate styles into one unified concept, thus making their juxtaposition sound natural. In his numerous recordings one finds clear examples of a variety of styles including straight-ahead jazz, ballad, fusion, world music and classical. In an interview with the Detroit Symphony, Childs explained: "I want to create sound environments that are healing to the world. I don't think that that aim is limited to a genre. The music that I try to do has many different genres, cultures and styles and I try to synthesize it into an organic whole for the larger goal of creating good in the world." Childs was deeply influenced by the fusion sounds of Chick Corea's Return to Forever, Herbie Hancock's Headhunters and Keith Emerson's work with ELP. The integration of fusion into Childs' repertoire is most apparent in his early recordings, such as 1995's I've Known Rivers, where he included synthesizers, electric bass and studio-enhanced drum sounds. In fact, Childs was chosen by Herbie Hancock in 1998 as a guest artist for the Return of the Headhunters album. But the music Childs is producing now is quite different. Gone are the electronic effects of 80s fusion. His sound is distilled, but his vision is more expansive than ever. On the piano or in a jazz setting he still demonstrates his quick access to the bebop language and can play at blazing tempos, but much of his recent work is guided by commissions. In these pieces he varies the instrumentation to match the project, sometimes combining the full orchestral palette with chorus and jazz rhythm section. An example of this is "In the Arms of the Beloved, " which was performed in 2024 by the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Childs received his first full-fledged, classically-oriented commission in the mid-80s. Since 1996 he has fulfilled two to three commissions a year, creating major works for such prestigious ensembles as the LA Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, The Kronos Quartet and many others. Childs successfully marries classical forms with jazz and improvised music in such a way as to enhance the impact of his message rather than draw attention to style and technique. His mentors in classical composition include composers Robert Linn (who studied with Darius Milhaud and Roger Sessions) and Morten Lauridsen, a recipient of the National Medal of the Arts. In a 2012 interview with pianist George Colligan for his blog, JazzTruth, Childs' elaborated on his use of classical techniques to enhance his expressive palette: "One thing I dug about classical music is that because it had such command of a technical aspect of orchestration and all of these musical devices, it really lent itself to drama. You can really paint tonal pictures with it, with that command of orchestration and structure. You can create these cinema-scapes, these tonal soundscapes, just by understanding how the Masters did it. So that was really invaluable to me." One concept that Childs has adapted from classical music and inserted into his jazz vocabulary is the freedom and breath that characterizes classical music's embodiment of time. He discussed this process in an interview with Chamber Music America: "Some years ago, I got a commission to write for the Dorian Wind Quintet, for piano and wind quintet... I'd never worked with a world-class classical chamber ensemble before…And what I found was that these musicians really played as a group in a way I'd never experienced before. There was a different sense of time. Everyone was tuned in to each other; there was a give and take. If someone came in late, everyone accommodated. In jazz, the time is, in a way, external…Playing with the Dorian Quintet, we made up our own time; we ebbed and flowed together according to the necessities of the moment. It was a huge learning experience for me… At a certain point, I started to think: Why don't I bring this process to a jazz ensemble?" This approach now infuses Childs' current writing. In some of his arrangements there are places where the time intentionally breathes rather than adheres to a metronomic count. This is most evident in Child’s most recent Grammy Award-winning recording, “The Winds of Change.” In this recording, the concept of “time” is fluid and conversational. In an interview with Jazziz Magazine Childs speaks of Kenny Wheeler’s 1976 ECM album Gnu High. He said that when he went back to listen to Wheeler’s original recording, he was moved by the playing and interaction between Keith Jarrett, Kenny Wheeler, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette and felt inspired to bring that sense of space and connection into his own quartet: “I thought that Ambrose (Akinmusire), Brian (Blade) and Scott (Colley) would be able to have similar conversations…I didn’t direct anybody to do anything because I wanted everybody to interpret the music and let the chips fall where they may.” Childs will be bringing that aesthetic to the Vermont Jazz Center on February 9th with his east-coast quartet featuring Jason Palmer, Matt Penman and Ari Hoenig. A self-described music nerd, Child’s first serious jazz experiences with world-class legends began with a tour of Japan with trombonist J.J. Johnson when he was only 19 years old. After that, at age 21, Childs joined up with trumpet titan Freddie Hubbard for six years. While still in his 20s, Childs also performed and recorded with Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson and Grover Washington. In the liner notes for his album Rebirth, Childs reflects on his experience playing in intense, aggressive, hard-bop ensembles as a young man: “J.J. and Freddie are responsible for the jazz part of my pedigree...I learned about comping from Freddie … I learned to expand accompanying into creating environments for the soloists…You couldn't listen to him and not know what to play." The influence of these hard-bop legends on Childs’ music is undeniable and is reflected in his penchant to allude to those styles, even today. The quartet performing at the Jazz Center will feature trumpeter Jason Palmer, who is quietly emerging as one of the most in-demand musicians of his generation. Palmer, who has taught at the VJC’s Summer Jazz Workshop, has performed with Roy Haynes, Herbie Hancock, Jimmy Smith (the organist), Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Ravi Coltrane, Mark Turner, Jeff Ballard, Lee Konitz, Phil Woods, Common, Roy Hargrove, Lewis Nash, and more. He is the recipient of a 2014 French American Cultural Exchange Jazz Fellowship and was named a 2011 Fellow in Music Composition by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Palmer took First Place in the 2009 Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition. The June 2007 issue of Downbeat Magazine cited him as one of the “Top 25 trumpeters of the Future.” In addition to performing on over forty albums as a sideman, Palmer has recorded seventeen albums under his own name and has toured over 30 countries with saxophonists Greg Osby, Grace Kelly, Matana Roberts. Palmer is currently Assistant Professor of Ensembles and Brass at Berklee College of Music, Jazz Trumpet, he also teaches at the New England Conservatory of Music and is the Ravenscroft visiting Jazz Artist at Arizona State University. Palmer has also served as an Assistant Professor at Harvard University and has taught at the New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City. The bassist in Childs’ quartet is Matt Penman. Originally from New Zealand, Penman moved to the U.S to attend Berklee College of Music and ended up as a first-call bassist in the NYC jazz scene. He is an established member of the SFJazz Collective and is the founder of the James Farm quartet with Joshua Redman, Aaron Parks and Eric Harland. Other notable collaborators have included John Scofield, Joe Lovano, Wayne Shorter, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Kenny Werner, Aaron Goldberg, Dave Douglas, Chris Cheek, Seamus Blake, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Guillermo Klein, Rebecca Martin, Nicholas Payton, Fred Hersch and Madeleine Peyroux. Penman was an Artist-in-Residence at the Brubeck Institute and served on the faculty of the Banff Workshop for Creative and Improvised Music. He is featured on over 100 recordings and has released four albums as a leader. The group’s drummer, Ari Hoenig, attended the University of North Texas and William Patterson College. After landing a regular job with the legendary Philadelphia organist Shirley Scott, Hoenig began to work regularly with heavy hitters in the NY jazz scene including Jean Michel Pilc, Kenny Werner, Chris Potter’s Underground, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Joshua Redman’s Elastic band, Jazz Mandolin Project and bands led by Wayne Krantz, Mike Stern, Richard Bona, Pat Martino, and Bojan Z. He has shared the stage with Herbie Hancock, Ivan Linz, Wynton Marsalis, Toots Thielemans, Dave Holland, Joe Lovano, and Gerry Mulligan and many others. Hoenig has recorded two self-produced solo drum CDs and leads his own quartet which has produced six recordings. In 2013, Hoenig won the BMW Welt [World] award in Munich, an international competition for best band led by a drummer. The VJC is especially grateful for the sponsorship of this event by friends of the Vermont Jazz Center’s Summer Jazz Workshop. Their generous contributions are what make VJC concerts affordable for all; their sponsorship allows for reduced-price admission to VJC concerts and subsidizes free admission for local music students. The VJC is also thankful for the ongoing support from the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. VJC publicity is underwritten by the Brattleboro Reformer and the Commons. Tickets for the Billy Childs Quartet at the Vermont Jazz Center are $25+ for general admission, (contact VJC about educational discounts); available online at www.vtjazz.org, or by email at sarah@vtjazz.org. Tickets and information on handicapped access can be attained by calling the Vermont Jazz Center ticket line, 802-254-9088, ext. 1. Come listen to Billy Childs in a quartet setting at the Vermont Jazz Center on Sunday, February 9th at 4:00 PM. write your comments about the article :: © 2025 Jazz News :: home page |