SYMPHONY CENTER

SYMPHONY CENTER

Date Posted: September 22 2008

Written By: Chicago Jazz

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SYMPHONY CENTER ANNOUNCES PROGRAMMING
FOR 2008-2009 JAZZ SERIES

Symphony Center's 2008-2009 jazz series kicks off Friday, September 26, with the inimitable song stylings of Cassandra Wilson. A sensuous, soulful and sultry vocalist, Wilson will perform selections from her newest album of timeless standards, "Loverly," due out in June 2008 on Blue Note Records. The collection shows off her amazing talent in new interpretations of old classics, from the great American songbook to blues to Broadway. Cassandra Wilson has been a favorite of Chicago audiences and a frequent guest at Symphony Center (she last appeared here in 2004). The Mississippi native, who began writing songs at age 12, is known for her eclecticism and deeply personal approach to folk songs, pop tunes, blues, country and her own jazz compositions. She has produced numerous best-selling recordings, including "Blue Skies," "New Moon Daughter" and "Traveling with Miles," her tribute CD to Miles Davis, one of her greatest influences, which also became a concert film.

Recognized for her throaty contralto, Wilson is sought after for performances around the world and has toured with such artists as Wynton Marsalis in his epic work "Blood on the Fields." Her unequaled jazz vocalism and distinctive style have earned her a Grammy Award and many other honors, including distinctions from Time Magazine ("America's Best Singer") and DownBeat ("Female Jazz Vocalist of the Year").
On Friday, October 17, Symphony Center marks the 50th anniversary of bossa nova with a performance by renowned singer /songwriter Milton Nascimento and the Jobim Trio.

One of the true icons of Brazilian music, Nascimento is beloved throughout the world for his timeless songs and unique voice. Throughout his 40-year career, he has released nearly 30 albums, including "Clube da Esquina," "Native Dancer" and the Grammy Award-winning "Nascimento." Although he is a master of Brazilian music, he has never confined himself to any one genre, often collaborating with artists such as Wayne Shorter, Paul Simon, Pat Metheny and Duran Duran. One of his closest relationships was with the late Antonio Carlos "Tom" Jobim, one of the most influential popular composers of the 20th century and a primary force behind the creation of bossa nova music.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the emergence of this musical style, Nascimento teams up with the Jobim Trio, featuring guitarist Paulo Jobim and pianist Daniel Jobim (son and grandson of the great Tom), and Tom’s longtime drummer, Paulo Braga. During this program, Nascimento and the Jobim Trio pay tribute to Tom's remarkable compositions, at the same time infusing them with their own present-day grooves. The group released an album on the EMI label in Brazil earlier this year; "Novas Bossas" will be released in the United States later this spring.

NEA Jazz Master and Symphony Center Jazz Icon Benny Golson celebrates his 80th birthday at Orchestra Hall on Friday, January 30, with a program created by Golson especially for the Jazz at Symphony Center series. This multitalented jazz legend headlines the program with the Benny Golson Jazztet. As a composer, Golson has written more than 300 songs, including some of jazz's most beloved standards. Songs like "I Remember Clifford," "Killer Joe" and "Along Came Betty" have found their way into countless performances throughout the world and are still recorded by today's top artists.

He has composed and arranged for musicians including Count Basie, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Sammy Davis Jr., Itzhak Perlman and Diana Ross; and he has composed the scores for a number of hit TV series and films, such as "MASH," "Mission Impossible," "The Mod Squad" and "The Partridge Family."

As a saxophonist, he has performed with world-famous bands led by Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey. For this performance, the all-star version of his Jazztet features Golson on tenor saxophone, Eddie Henderson on trumpet, Steve Davis on trombone, Mike LeDonne on piano, Buster Williams on bass and Carl Allen on drums.
Opening the program is pianist Mulgrew Miller, one of Golson’s closest collaborators.

One of the most distinguished artists of his generation, Miller will lead his trio—including bassist Ivan Taylor and drummer Rodney Green—in some of Golson's most celebrated compositions. Prior to the concert, Symphony Center will offer a Jazz Connection event: a screening of the 1994 documentary film "A Great Day in Harlem." The movie recounts the story behind Esquire magazine’s famous 1958 portrait of 57 jazz musicians, including Benny Golson.

On Friday, February 13, Symphony Center marks the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth with a special performance of Max Roach's landmark work "We Insist! Freedom Now Suite" featuring Dee Dee Bridgewater and Lewis Nash. Written in 1960 by Roach and Chicago’s own singer-songwriter Oscar Brown, Jr., the suite captures the emotion and the complexity of the struggle for civil rights, in both the United States and in Africa. The album was created with an eye toward the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and it was the first of several jazz records written to give voice to the growing need for racial equality.

Nearly 50 years after its composition, "The Freedom Now Suite" maintains a modern sound with its bold time signatures and discordant effects, its use of African percussion and wordless vocals, and its opportunities for memorable solos. Headlining the ensemble for this performance are vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater and drummer Lewis Nash. Bridgewater, an award-winning vocalist and actress who is known the world over as the captivating host of National Public Radio's JazzSet, will bring her own extraordinary vocal talents to the role originated by Abbey Lincoln. Nash, the evening’s musical director, is the drummer of choice for an incredible array of artists, from the masters of the music to the hottest young players of today, and his extensive discography numbers more than 300 recordings.

This concert opens with a special set from vocalist Maggie Brown, daughter of Oscar Brown, Jr., who will present a tribute to her late father, performing some of his most celebrated songs.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis returns to Chicago on Friday, February 27. A jazz trumpeter, composer, bandleader, advocate for the arts and educator, Marsalis has helped propel jazz to the forefront of American culture. He has served as Jazz at Lincoln Center's artistic director as well as music director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra since its inception. His prominent position in American culture was solidified in April 1997, when he became the first jazz artist to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize in music for his work "Blood on the Fields," which was commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center.

The remarkably versatile Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, composed of 15 of today’s finest jazz soloists and ensemble players, has been the Jazz at Lincoln Center resident orchestra since 1992, giving concerts and leading educational events in New York, across the country and around the world; in concert halls, dance venues, jazz clubs, public parks, river boats and churches; and with symphony orchestras, ballet troupes, local students and an ever-expanding roster of guest artists.

The orchestra spends nearly a third of each year on tour, performing a vast repertoire that includes rare historic arrangements to Jazz at Lincoln Center-commissioned works. In addition to its highly anticipated annual performances on Symphony Center's jazz series, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra has also performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra: in October 1999 and September 2004, the two ensembles presented side-by-side performances of Grieg's "Peer Gynt" Suite and Duke Ellington’s jazz arrangement of the same composition, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra joined the CSO for performances of Marsalis' own "All Rise" in January 2007.

On Friday, March 20, Jazz at Symphony Center presents a concert celebrating Blue Note Records 70th anniversary, featuring some of the legendary label’s most notable stars: Bill Charlap, piano; Peter Bernstein, guitar; Ravi Coltrane, saxophone; Lewis Nash, drums; Nicholas Payton, trumpet; Peter Washington, bass; and Steve Wilson, saxophone. Established in New York City in 1939 by two German immigrants, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, Blue Note Records was created to "serve the uncompromising expressions" of jazz. In the seven decades since, the label has been one of the most important forces in the evolution and proliferation of the genre, recording every style from hot jazz to swing, boogie-woogie to bebop, fusion to avant-garde. It has presented the most influential artists in the history of the art form: Art Blakey, Fats Navarro, Bud Powell, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Jimmy Smith, Bobby Hutcherson and Cecil Taylor, to name just a few. For this celebratory tribute concert, music director and pianist Bill Charlap leads a specially assembled group of today’s most exciting jazz stars in classic tunes from Blue Note history by Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver, Herbie Hancock,


Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter and many others. Before the performance, noted jazz historian and author Ashley Kahn hosts a Jazz Connection lecture on the enduring legacy of Blue Note Records; his book on the label's anniversary will be released in Spring 2009.

Friday, April 17, sees the return of virtuoso saxophonist and Symphony Center favorite Branford Marsalis. Marsalis' path to success has included a wide array of experiences—he played in Sting's band, he led the "Tonight Show" band for three years, he's undertaken classical collaborations (he performed concertos with the Chicago Symphony in 2004 and 2007), launched his own recording label and he has earned international praise for his creative music making.

Marsalis has been hailed as a virtuoso of tenor, alto and soprano sax, and he leads a first-rate quartet which often features pianist Joey Calderazzo, bassist Eric Revis and drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts. A member of jazz’s most famous musical dynasty, Branford Marsalis continues to set himself apart with impeccable technique and interpretive insight in such wide-ranging repertoire as Coltrane and Copland. His recordings have won three Grammy Awards, and his Marsalis Music label has released 18 CDs and three DVDs since its inception in 2002, including the quartet's most recent "Braggtown" (2006), highlighting their distinctive talents in new compositions by Marsalis as well as arrangements of music dating back to the 17th century.

A native of New Orleans, Marsalis has been actively involved in Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts and is honorary chair of Habitat for Humanity's Operation Home Delivery, a project whose goal is to create a musician's village consisting of Habitat-constructed homes for displaced New Orleans musicians.

Jazz at Symphony Center presents its 2008-2009 Jazz Innovator on Friday, May 1: the boundary-pushing pianist Brad Mehldau. Since the early 1990s, Mehldau has come to fame as an inventive and compelling young artist, celebrated for his invigorating takes on standards, exceptionally masterful improvisations and penetrating treatments of songs by pop bands including Radiohead and Oasis. He has recorded his settings of poems for soprano Renee Fleming and is composing a work for mezzo-soprano with piano, which he and Anne Sofie von Otter will premiere at Carnegie Hall in February 2009. Through such diverse endeavors, Mehldau continues to find fresh and challenging ways to speak to listeners of all types and all generations. He is first and foremost an improviser, but he also has a deep fascination for the formal architecture of music, which enables him to convey a wide range of expression.

Mehldau is prolific as a solo pianist as well as an acclaimed trio leader, and he has worked with a number of jazz greats, including Joshua Redman, Charlie Hayden, Lee Konitz, Wayne Shorter and John Scofield. Mehldau recently collaborated in a notable project with legendary guitarist Pat Metheny, recording two enthusiastically received albums of old favorites and new creations ("Metheny Mehldau" and "Quartet," along with Larry Grenadier and Jeff Ballard), and touring extensively together.

The Brad Mehldau Trio(featuring Grenadier and Ballard) has released an ambitious series of five albums on the Warner Brothers label, entitled "The Art of the Trio." This Symphony Center concert features the iconic Mehldau in both trio and solo settings.

The following week, on Friday, May 8, eminent pianist Marcus Roberts brings a special project to Symphony Center, performing a complete recreation of his landmark album "Deep in the Shed." With music that spans the total art form of jazz, "Deep in the Shed: A Blues Suite" is a multifaceted, shifting blues cycle that draws upon sources ranging from jazz visionary John Coltrane to gospel legend Mahalia Jackson, Arabic music to early American folk.

The 1990 album was called "the most important jazz album of the last 10 years" by the New York Times and marked the emergence of Roberts as a modern musical genius. The probing suite shows off the Ellingtonian harmonies of Roberts’ ensemble of outstanding sidemen: Roland Guerin, bass; Jason Marsalis, drums; Marcus Printup, trumpet; Ron Westray, trombone; Wess "Warmdaddy" Anderson, saxophones; and Stephen Riley, tenor saxophone. Together they bring to life his songs "The Governor," "Nebuchadnezzar" and "Spiritual Awakening," among others, which showcase the artist's jazz and gospel influences. Born in Jacksonville, Fla., Marcus Roberts taught himself to play the piano at age 8 while attending the Florida School for the Blind. After studying classical piano at Florida State University, he toured with Wynton Marsalis for six years, and he rose to worldwide prominence when he took first prize in the 1987 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. Roberts has released 18 critically acclaimed recordings, several of which shot to no.1 on Billboard's jazz chart. In addition to his busy touring schedule, Roberts is devoted to the development of young musicians and to exposing jazz to young audiences, serving on the faculty of the School of Music at Florida State University and frequently giving master classes and school shows with his trio all around the globe.

The 2008-2009 Jazz at Symphony Center series concludes on Friday, June 5, with a performance of music by Duke Ellington from the Chicago Jazz Ensemble with Jon Faddis. Founded by the late composer and conductor William Russo as the professional jazz ensemble at Columbia College, the Chicago Jazz Ensemble gives more than 40 concerts per year at local, national and international venues. The ensemble is led by Artistic Director Jon Faddis and made up of musicians from the city's jazz elite, including established stars, acclaimed Columbia College faculty and Chicago’s brightest young talents. The band's large ensemble repertoire moves easily from the classic tunes of Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton and Duke Ellington, to the works of contemporary jazz composers.

This concert is part of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's 2009 Dvorak Festival, a three-week celebration of the music and legacy of one of classical music's most influential composers. Antonín Dvoøák was the musical voice of Czechoslovakia, incorporating the legends, myths and native folksongs of his country into each piece he composed. He came to New York in 1892 to help American composers search for their own national sound, advising them to look to their own legends and songs—including Negro spirituals and the music of the Native Americans—for inspiration. One of Dvorak's students in New York was composer Will Marion Cook, who in turn mentored Duke Ellington. Ellington and Dvoøák shared a commitment to composing music that echoed the traditions and sounds of their ethnic roots, each reflecting their own cultures through the music they created. During this performance, the Chicago Jazz Ensemble will perform two of Ellington's beloved suites, "Black, Brown and Beige" and "The New Orleans Suite." Prior to the concert, Symphony Center will present a Jazz Connection event: a screening of the critically acclaimed 2007 film "Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life," which documents the life of composer and arranger Billy Strayhorn, Ellington’s frequent collaborator.

Ten-concert and five-concert subscriptions for the 2008-2009 Jazz at Symphony Center series are currently on sale. Members of the general public who are interested in receiving more information should call Symphony Center’s Subscription Sales Department at (312) 294-3030 (800-223-7114 toll-free), Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; or visit the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Web site at www.cso.org. Groups of 10 people or more who are interested in subscribing to the Jazz at Symphony Center series should call Symphony Center’s Group Sales Department at (312) 294-3040. Single tickets for these performances will go on sale on August 15.

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