THE SCULPTURED SOUNDS MUSIC FESTIVAL (NYC)

[Lois Gilbert]

THE SCULPTURED SOUNDS MUSIC FESTIVAL

Featuring New School Jazz Faculty Member Reggie Workman

Sundays, February 11, 18, and 25, at 7:00 p.m.

St. Peter’s Church, 619 Lexington Avenue.

$20 suggested donation.

For more information, visit www.sculpturedsounds.com.

Founded and produced by faculty member Reggie Workman, these concerts feature numerous New School Jazz faculty, alumni, and students.

[Lois Gilbert]

February 2007, Every Sunday, 7-11PM, Suggested Donation: $20
Weekly Line-Up
Series Host:
Gil Noble (Host of ABC's "Like It Is")
Week 1 / Feb 4
Opening Acts: Brew — Miya Masaoka (Koto), Gerry Hemingway (Drums), Reggie Workman (Bass)

BassDrumBone — Mark Helias (Bass), Ray Anderson (Trombone), Gerry Hemingway (Drums)

Headliner: The Reggie Workman Ensemble — Jason Hwang (Violin), Pheeroan aKLaff (Drums), Leena Conquist (Vocals), Amiri Baraka (Spoken Word), Andy Bemkey (Piano), Reggie Workman (Bass)

Demonstrator/Lecturer: Art/Sound Improvisationist, Umberto Grati

Week 2 / Feb 11
Opening Act: Poet/Spoken-Word Artist, Kayo

Headliners: Great Friends — Billy Harper (Tenor Saxophone), Billy Hart (Drums), Stanley Cowell (Piano), Sonny Fortune (Alto Saxophone) and Reggie Workman (Bass)

Rashied Ali Quintet — Jumaane Smith (Trumpet), Lawrence Clark (Tenor Saxophone), Greg Murphy (Piano), Joris Teepe (Bass), Rashied Ali (Drums)

Demonstrator/Lecturer: Ashley Kahn, Biographer and Author of The House That Trane Built (John Coltrane), Kind of Blue (Miles Davis), A Love Supreme (John Coltrane)

Week 3 / Feb 18
Opening Act: Charles Gayle Trio — Charles Gayle (Saxophone), Hill Greene (Bass), Michael Wimberley (Drums)

Headliner: Ashanti's Message — J. D. Parran (Multi-Reeds), Kevin Jones (Percussion), Yayoi Ikawa (Piano), Tyshawn Sorley (Drums), Reggie Workman (Bass), Special Guest: Charles Gayle (Alto Saxophone)

Demonstrator/Lecturer: MAD (Montclair Academy of Dance) Youth Drummers (under the direction of Kevin Jones)

Week 4 / Feb 25
Opening Acts: Sojourn — Nioka Workman (Cello), Judith Insel (Viola), Marlene Rice (Violinist), Kenny Davis (Bass)

Paradigm — Matthew Garrison and group

Headliner: The African-American Legacy Project — Charles Tolliver (Conductor), Reggie Workman (Project Director/Bassist), Richard Harper (Chorus Director), Rhonda Kirschbaum (Calligrapher/Copyist)




Orchestra — Matthew Garrison (Electric Bass), Kiane Sawadi (Trombone), Stafford Hunter (Trombone), Aaron Johnson (Trombone & Tuba), Elizabeth Panzer (Harp), Nioka Workman (Cello), Kevin Jones (Percussion), Jimmy Owens (Trumpet), Winston Byrd (Trumpet), Mark Taylor (French Horn), Vincent Chauncey (French Horn), Marshall Sealy (French Horn), Billy Harper (Baritone Saxophone), Reggie Workman (Acoustic Bass), E. J. Strickland (Drums), Stanley Cowell (Piano)




Chorus — Dean Bowman, Ellen Christy, Angie Workman, Ryan Blum Krystal, Eustacia Foster, Francina Connors, Rosi Hertlein, Adam Jackson, Danielle Elliott, Clauda Atkinson, Lenart Krecic, Judy Bady



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All Events Take Place at Saint Peter's Church, 619 Lexington Avenue at East 54th Street.
For more info and reservations, please call (212) 642-5277

Reggie Workman, Founder/Producer and Francina Connors, Co-Founder/Production Coordinator

[Lois Gilbert]

At Avant-Garde Jazz Series, Rashied Ali and a Reunion
By NATE CHINEN
The Sculptured Sounds Music Festival adheres to an appealingly pure-hearted ideal. Organized and anchored by the bassist Reggie Workman, it presents adventurous jazz groups every Sunday night in February. The concerts take place at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Midtown Manhattan, familiar to a certain breed of New Yorker as the site of countless jazz memorial services. That sounds morbid, but it didn’t feel that way on Sunday. Well, maybe just at first, as a quiet, expectant rustle could be heard in the pews.

Notably, those pews were nearly full despite the Grammy Awards, which were on television. According to Mr. Workman, this attendance was in stark contrast to the previous Sunday’s concert, which competed with another broadcast event, the Super Bowl. (Take those comparative results and draw your own conclusions about jazz fans.) Add that the audience was not only robust but also diverse — in sex, race and age — and you have the kind of turnout that would make any producer happy.

Musically, the evening was a mixed bag. Its high points were very high, its low points were fairly low, and there was a lot of moderate stuff in between. The evening, thankfully, yielded mostly positive results and had enough propulsion to shake off whatever wasn’t working.

The headliner was Great Friends, a group that included Mr. Workman. (He makes no pretense of objectivity as a producer, appearing on each of the festival’s installments.) Formed in the 1980s by the drummer Billy Hart, the reunited ensemble featured its charter members: Mr. Hart and Mr. Workman, as well as the tenor saxophonist Billy Harper and the pianist Stanley Cowell. A later member, the alto saxophonist Sonny Fortune, had bowed out at the last minute, Mr. Workman said.

After getting off to a shaky start with the calypsolike “East Harlem Nostalgia,” the group delivered one of the evening’s standout moments. It was “Equipoise,” an anthem by Mr. Cowell with a leaping-interval motif. It was an ideal showcase for Mr. Cowell, who fashioned a saloon-style introduction and later improvised a more ardent stream of arpeggios and cascades.

Mr. Harper took a similarly stellar turn on “Insight,” a breakneck number composed by Mr. Hart with a chord progression borrowed from “Autumn Leaves.” Mr. Harper’s solo was a relentless sweep of eighth notes, each crisply articulated despite the daunting tempo. In the rhythm section, Mr. Workman and Mr. Hart made their frantic swing feel less so, shifting their accents to create clear spaces whenever the music needed to breathe.

During an earlier performance slot, the drummer Rashied Ali applied the same strategy to an almost comically turbocharged rendition of “Joshua,” a Victor Feldman song associated with Miles Davis. Mr. Ali, best known as the chief percussionist in the squalling late-period groups of John Coltrane, was leading a quintet featuring Jumaane Smith on trumpet and Antoine Roney on tenor saxophone.

Defying his reputation for fearsome avant-gardism, Mr. Ali drove his group in a hard-bop direction; the reference point seemed to be Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. This was the case not only on “Shied Indeed,” a crackling opener by Mr. Smith, but also “Saturn,” a movement from “Interstellar Space,” the duet album Coltrane made with Mr. Ali. It was a strange translation; Mr. Ali seemed intent on normalizing something treasured precisely for its utter lack of compromise.

In the program’s opening set, a Def Poetry Jam veteran who goes by the name Kayo delivered some sophomoric verse in a basso profundo that made his weaker lines — like “You are my sanity,” with each vowel distended — sound bloated and silly.

But Kayo managed one apt phrase during a poem about moving mountains, which is not a bad metaphor for the effort behind an artist-run avant-garde jazz festival. “Why not us?” was the phrase, which Kayo uttered with unusual clarity. You could easily imagine it as a slogan for Mr. Workman and his peers.

The Sculptured Sounds Music Festival continues on Sunday at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, Lexington Avenue at 54th Street, (212) 642-5277.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/13/ar...ts&oref=slogin