Calendar
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Burnt Sugar, The Arkestra Chamber:
A Workshop in Conducted Improvisation
In this unprecedented performance workshop, open to student performers from any and all traditions and practices--musicians, poets, actors, dancers, musicians, writers--Greg Tate, Louis Armstrong Visiting Professor at the Center for Jazz Studies for Fall 2009, will demonstrate how new musical material may be generated and existing musical material may be restructured and renewed in real-time performance, using Conduction, the versatile lexicon of hand and baton gestures developed over the past twenty years by improvisor and conductor Lawrence "Butch" Morris.
As leader of the innovative musical ensemble Burnt Sugar, The Arkestra Chamber, Tate uses Conduction in live performance and in the studio to compose and select material from a wide range of composers and genres--Thelonious Monk, Chaka Khan, Jimi Hendrix, Charles Mingus, Iggy Pop, and others. In this workshop, joined by members of the Arkestra and the workshop participants, Tate will demonstrate these techniques and create new music.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009, 7-9:30 pm
301 Philosophy Hall
Columbia University Morningside Campus
Sponsored by the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, and presented in collaboration with the Louis Armstrong Jazz Performance Program and the Music Performance Program, Columbia University. Photo of Burnt Sugar by Laura Williams.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Technotopia 1969: Miles Davis at the Crossroads
Professor Michael E. VealDepartment of Music, Yale University
Harald Kisiedu, Department of Music, Columbia University, respondent
This paper will examine Miles Davis's influential 1969 double album Bitches Brew not simply as a foundational piece of jazz-rock fusion, but rather as a piece of "electric
jazz" which drew on aspects of popular practices and the jazz-avant-garde in
equal measure.
Ethnomusicologist Michael Veal, Associate Professor of Music at Yale University, addresses topics of biography, history, analysis, and interpretation in various musics of Africa and the African diaspora. His most recent book, Dub: Soundscapes & Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae (Wesleyan University Press, 2007) examines the ways in which the studio-based innovations of Jamaican recording engineers during the 1970s created a sonic space for the emergence of a distinctly post-colonial Jamaican culture locally, while they worked to transform the structure and concept of the post-WWII popular song globally.
Monday, April 6, 2009, 8 pm
622 Dodge Hall, Columbia University Morningside Campus
Free and open to the public
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Yusef Komunyakaa/Billy Bang
Sacrifice: Meditation on the Vietnam Experience
A Concert and Conversation
The Harlem Stage Gatehouse is the intimate setting for two emotionally charged programs that showcase the intermedia work of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa and the cutting edge sounds of violinist Billy Bang's Aftermath Band. Coming from seemingly disparate backgrounds — Komunyakaa raised in Louisiana, Billy Bang reared in the Bronx — the two artists share a common experience as Vietnam veterans.
In Yusef Komunyakaa's Nine Bridges Back, twelve collaborating artists create a collage of text, voices and instruments that address complex histories and personal experiences in the context of the war. With Yusef Komunyakaa (poet); Vince di Mura (composer/keyboards) with Annie Lee Moffett (vocals) and Tony Jackson (narrator); Alan Benditt (actor); Susie Ibarra (composer/percussionist) with Jennifer Choi (violin), Carol To Moy (singer) and Cathy Linh Che (translator); Tomas Doncker (composer/guitar/vocals) and Marvin Sewell (guitar); Noriko Kamo (piano); and Dawn Akemi Saito (director).
Billy Bang and his Aftermath Band perform compositions based on Bang's experience as a combat soldier in Vietnam. Bang's music evokes and confronts memories through a combination of Western and Asian elements, including the use of Vietnamese traditional instruments. The ensemble features musicians who experienced both the Vietnam and Korean Wars. With Billy Bang, violin; James Spaulding, alto saxophone, flute; Ted Daniel, trumpet; Henry P. Warner, clarinet, alto clarinet; Andrew Bemkey, piano; Ngô Thanh Nhành, dàn tranh; Muziki Roberson, piano; Hilliard Greene, bass; Newman Taylor Baker, drums.
A pre-concert discussion at 6 pm with artists Bang and Komunyakaa will be moderated by Brent Hayes Edwards, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Conversation: 6:00 pm
Concert: 7:30 pm
Harlem Stage Gatehouse
150 Convent Avenue at West 135th Street, New York City
Tickets: $15
For tickets, visit www.harlemstage.org, or call the Harlem Stage box office at 212-281-9240, ext. 19/20
Co-Presented by Columbia/Harlem Jazz Project and Harlem Stage
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Jack Kerouac's Jazz: A Conversation
Sara Villa, Università degli Studi di Milano
David Amram, composer
John Szwed, Professor of Music and Jazz Studies, Columbia University
An interdisciplinary look at poet and novelist Jack Kerouac’s little-known writings on jazz, and his improvised voice-over and Amram’s soundtrack to Pull My Daisy, the 1959 landmark in new American cinema directed by Alfred Leslie and Robert Frank.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009, 7:30 pm
301 Philosophy Hall, Columbia University Morningside Campus
Free and open to the publicWednesday, March 4, 2009
Writing From A Cave: Haruki Murakami and Jazz
Kiyofumi Tsubaki, Tsuda College, Tokyo; Visiting Scholar, Center for Jazz Studies, Columbia University
Emily Lordi, respondent
Japan’s acceptance of jazz was unique; most people became jazz fans through listening to jazz records, and in this process the “jazz café” played a very important role. A Japanese jazz café typically presented a very dark, cave-like (or, perhaps, womb-like) atmosphere, separated from the actual world, where jazz records were played at high volume. Customers were not permitted to talk to each other, and in any event it was usually impossible to do so. Consequently, the act of listening to jazz became intensely personal.
The writer Haruki Murakami's intense engagement with jazz is well known; with a collection of thousands of records, he even became an owner of a jazz café in Tokyo in the 1970s. With particular reference to Murakami’s best-selling novel Norwegian Wood, Professor Tsubaki and respondent Emily Lordi will consider the relationship between jazz and Murakami’s literature, connecting Japan’s acceptance of jazz with the peculiarly womb-like characteristics of Murakami’s fiction.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009, 8 pm
622 Dodge Hall, Columbia University Morningside Campus
Free and open to the publicTuesday, March 3, 2009
The Barry Ulanov Memorial Lecture:
"Ecstacies of Influence: The Voice Of Billie Holiday"
Robert G. O'Meally, Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Professor Robert O'Meally, founding director of the Center for Jazz Studies, specializes in 19th- and 20th-century American literature, as well as African American literature and jazz culture—including music, literature, painting, film, photography, theater, and dance. He is one of the world's leading interpreters of the cultural significance of Billie Holiday, a singer whose influence transcends genre. His work on this American icon includes a biography, Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday, and a documentary of the same name which has been shown on US public television (more).
Tuesday, March 3, 2009, 6 pm
Social Hall, Union Theological Seminary
3041 Broadway, north of 120th Street, New York City
Free and open to the publicReception to follow
www.utsnyc.edu/events
Thursday, February 26, 2009
In Search of the Lost Riddim: Jamaican Jazz Fusion
A Concert and Conversation
Curated by Herbie Miller
With Cedric Brooks (saxophones), Ernest Ranglin (guitar), Wayne Batchelor (bass), Desmond Jones (drums), Cecil "Sonny" Bradshaw, (trumpet and piano), Orville Hammond (piano), Larry McDonald (congas), and Douglas Ewart (reeds and percussion)
This once-in-a-lifetime evening highlights the ongoing relationship between Jamaican and American culture in a performance featuring the leading innovators of Jamaican jazz. The evening begins with a discussion between the musicians and producer and cultural historian Herbie Miller.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Conversation: 6:00 pm
Concert: 7:30 pm
Harlem Stage at Aaron Davis Hall/The City College of New York
West 135th Street at Convent Avenue, New York City
Tickets: $15
For tickets: www.harlemstage.org, or call the Harlem Stage box office at 212-281-9240, ext. 19/20
Co-Presented by Columbia/Harlem Jazz Project and Harlem Stage
Thursday, December 4, 2008
The Louis Armstrong Lecture, Fall 2008
"You Think You Know Me..." Jazz Broadcasting Under Apartheid
Gwen Ansell
Louis Armstrong Visiting Professor, Columbia University
Fall 2008
Thursday, December 4, 2008, 7:30 pm
620 Dodge Hall, Columbia University Morningside Campus
116th and Broadway, New York City
Reception to follow.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
A Home Within:
Sathima Bea Benjamin
in conversation with Gwen Ansell,
Louis Armstrong Visiting Professor, Fall 2008
with Onaje Allan Gumbs, piano, and Carol Ann Muller, Department of Music, University of Pennsylvania
For South Africans of color under apartheid, America and its jazz scene were the site of dreams: the place where the genre was shaped and black musicians achieved national stardom. For the African-American community, Africa, as the ancestral homeland, embodies its own visions. Singer/composer Sathima Bea Benjamin grew up in Cape Town, watching movies and listening to jazz records from America. Rejecting a life under apartheid, her career took her to New York, where she now lives. In conversation with Gwen Ansell, Sathima discusses with sung and recorded illustrations the emotions and debates American music stirred among Cape Town’s jazz players and the way America responds to the Africa she carries in her heart and her music.
Thursday, November 20, 2008, 7:30 pm
622 Dodge Hall, Columbia University Morningside Campus
116th and Broadway, New York City
Reception to follow.
© 2008, Columbia University Center for Jazz Studies.
Last Updated September 2, 2008.
