Harlem Speaks, Jazz For Curious Listeners, Saturday Panels and More Set for National Jazz Museum, Nov 2012

This November, The National Jazz Museum in Harlem continues to offer a wide range of top quality free programming and affordable concerts from jazz's most celebrated musicians, educators and historians.

First and foremost, join the museum for and/or support its benefit concert on November 8th – see details below.

Harlem Speaks, the museum's flagship public program of oral histories, offers in depth conversation with two master saxophonist/composer/educators, Bill Kirchner and Ted Nash.

This month's Jazz For Curious Listeners focuses on HBO's acclaimed series Treme. As the musuem has in past years, the sessions will be hosted by noted journalist Larry Blumenfeld, who has spent extended time in New Orleans and written about it at length in the Wall Street Journal.

Saturday Panels will feature an afternoon of New Orleans jazz and talk – this will be a joyous way to spend a weekend afternoon.

Jazz at The Players returns with another elegant, chamber jazz concert; saxophone giant Wayne Escoffery is bringing an all-star quartet to play in the intimate, acoustically perfect setting of this Gramercy Park club.

And Jonathan Batiste, just back from a successful two week engagement in Doha, Qatar, returns with his sell-out series Jazz Is:NOW!. If you haven't been to one of these sessions yet, run, don't walk!

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Jazz for Curious Listeners
Tuning into Treme
Bands on the Run
7:00 – 8:30pm
Location: NJMH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th Street, Suite 4D)
FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300
With Larry Blumenfeld, The Wall Street Journal

In Sidney Bechet's memoir, "Treat It Gentle," the late, great clarinetist's real grandfather is supplanted by Omar, a fictional figure based on a folk tale, all the better to convey stirring truths about the true origins of New Orleans jazz. Real and imagined intermingLe Pointedly in New Orleans, in all walks of life. Set in New Orleans, David Simon's fictional HBO series "Treme," now in its third season, picked up three months after the floods that resulted from the levee failures after Hurricane Katrina. Culture, which in New Orleans means a tight braid of music, cuisine, dance, visual art, and street life, is the primary focus of the series, as indeed it was and is the defining element of the city's recovery and renewed identity.

These 90-minute conversations, led by writer Larry Blumenfeld, who has written extensively about New Orleans since the flood, will use the third season of the HBO series to frame a wide-ranging consideration of jazz culture in New Orleans and its role in continued recovery. Excerpts from the show will be screened, and special guests-musicians, participants in the series, and scholars-will join in the discussion.

Bands on the Run: Season 3 opened with a riveting scene of musicians getting arrested at a memorial procession in the street, based on an actual 2007 incident. We'll look at the historic tension between the city and its indigenous culture, how it has recently bubbled up in clubs, on Facebook, and in city council chambers, and how it affects the cultural life of New Orleans residents and the careers of musicians.

Larry Blumenfeld writes about music and culture for The Wall Street Journal, Village Voice and many other publications, is editor-at-large of Jazziz magazine, and blogs at: http://blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes. He is a former Katrina Media Fellow with the Open Society Institute, researching cultural recovery in New Orleans, and the winner of the 2012 Jazz Journalists Association Helen Dance-Robert Palmer Award for Writing.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Christian McBride & Jonathan Batiste Together in Concert
A Benefit Concert for The National Jazz Museum in Harlem
6:30pm Reception, 7:30pm Concert
Location: El Teatro at El Museo del Barrio (1230 Fifth Avenue at 104th Street)
$100 for Orchestra Seating for the Concert Only
$150 for Preferred Seating and Admission to a Pre-Concert Reception with the Artists
$250 for Prime Seating, Admission to the Pre-Concert Reception with the Artists and a one-year NJMH Membership
$40 Student Tickets (with Student ID) for Balcony Seats
For more information: 212-348-8300 | http://jazzmuseuminharlem.org/evite/
Please come and support the hundreds of events that the NJMH provides free of charge every year.

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