Nat'l Jazz Museum in Harlem Presents 'Jazz for Curious Listeners,' 9/16

This week, the NJMH presents another exemplary schedule of events, ranging from evenings with two living legends, alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson and pianist/composer Randy Weston to celebrations of poet Langston Hughes, tenor sax giants Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins, and concluding with live music supporting a retrospective on the art work of early giant giants George Wettling and Pee Wee Russell.

 

Monday, September 13, 2010 (note date change)
Jazz for Curious Readers
Langston Hughes: The Recordings
7:00 - 8:30pm, at the NJMH Visitors Center located at 104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C.

Back in the day Langston Hughes was called the voice of Harlem and even the poet laureate of Negro Americans. Hughes imbued his lines with the echoes of jazz and gospel, and may have been akin to a 20th-century Chaucer, capturing common experiences in bold new rhythms. He once said, "I tried to write poems like the songs they sang on Seventh Street... (these songs) had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going."

In 1926 he wrote the now classic "Weary Blues." In 1958 he took part in a recording of this work (which includes the famous "A Dream Deferred") paired it with compositions written in collaboration with Charles Mingus, Leonard Feather, and Horace Parlan. Mingus's compositional style combined with Hughes "cool" prose and poetry, written with rhythms straight out of Harlem, made for a revealing outing.

This is a free event.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Jazz for Curious Listeners
Tenor Madness: Lester Young/Coleman Hawkins/Chu Berry/Herschel Evans
7:00 - 8:30pm, at the NJMH Visitors Center located at 104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C.

The Savory Collection featured songs and solos played by the two men who defined the sound and style on tenor saxophone in the first decades of the dispersal of jazz on record and in clubs and stages around the world: Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. Yet Chu Berry and Herschel Evans were also two very important musicians on tenor from those years in the late '30s, now too often sidestepped by critics and fans that focus solely on Prez and Hawk.

This event is free.

Thursday, September 16, 2010
Harlem Speaks
Lou Donaldson, Saxophonist
6:30 - 8:30pm, at the NJMH Visitors Center located at 104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C.

Lou Donaldson, one of the true keepers of the classic jazz, is a witty raconteur with stories galore. His distinctive, blues-based tone has been heard in a variety of small-group settings, and he has recorded dozens of worthy and spirited sets throughout the years.

He began playing clarinet at 15, and soon switched to the alto sax. He attended college and performed in a Navy band while in the military. Donaldson first gained attention in 1952, when he started recording for Blue Note as a leader. At the age of 25, his style was fully formed, and although it would continue growing in depth through the years, Donaldson had already found his sound. In 1954, he participated in a notable gig with Art Blakey, Clifford Brown, Horace Silver and Tommy Potter that Blue Note records documented extensively, and which directly preceded the Jazz Messengers. He recorded as a sideman in the 1950s and occasionally with Thelonious Monk, Milt Jackson and Jimmy Smith, among others, yet he has been a bandleader from the mid-1950s up to now.

Donaldson's early Blue Note recordings were straight-ahead bop dates. In 1958 he began to incorporate a conga player, and from 1961 his bands often used an organist rather than a pianist. His blues-drenched style became a staple of soul-jazz, the musical context he's best known for by the jazz public. His association with Blue Note (1952-63) was succeeded by some excellent (if now-scarce) sets for Cadet and Argo (1963-66). Donaldson returned to Blue Note in 1967 and ventured into the more commercial leanings of the label; in this vein, he played an electronic Varitone sax, which some critics say watered down his sound. Yet, the success of "Alligator Boogaloo" in 1967 belied such criticism.

In the early '80s began recording soul-jazz and hard bop dates for Muse, Timeless and Milestone, which found him once again in prime form, not diminished to this very day. For proof of this claim, hear him proclaim that "Kenny G shouldn't try this," at one of his concerts, as he launches into a furious up-tempo number that he handles with aplomb, with blues and bebop lines and even occasional references to "Flight of the Bumblebee."

This event is free.

Friday, September 17, 2010
Harlem in the Himalayas
Randy Weston: Solo Piano
7:00pm at the Rubin Museum of Art located at 150 West 17th Street.

Tickets are $18 in advance and $20 at door. For tickets visit the RMA Box Office at http://www.rmanyc.org/harleminthehimalayas or call 212-620-5000 ext. 344.

After 60 years of musical inspiration and African diasporic verve, Randy Weston remains one of the world's foremost pianists and composers today, a true innovator and visionary.

Encompassing the vast rhythmic heritage of Africa, his global creations continue to musically inform and inspire. "Weston has the biggest sound of any jazz pianist since Ellington and Monk, as well as the richest most inventive beat," declared jazz critic Stanley Crouch, "but his art is more than projection and time; it's the result of a studious and inspired intelligence...an intelligence that is creating a fresh synthesis of African elements with jazz technique".

Songs such as his "Little Niles" and "Hi Fly" are perennial contributions to the repertoire of the jazz songbook. In his solo performance tonight expect to hear such classics as well as others that embody the sound of surprise.

Sunday, September 19, 2010
Jazz at The Studio
The Paintings of Pee Wee Russell and George Wettling
2:00 - 4:00pm at The Studio Museum in HarlEm Located at 144 West 125th Street.

AN AFTERNOON IN HARLEM WITH GEORGE AND PEE WEE
Pee Wee Russell, one of jazz' most idiosyncratic clarinetists and George Wettling, one of its most swinging drummers, were also painters. The NJMH All Stars explore the swirling world of the 1920's that produced their mature works of the 1940's and 50's. Rare canvases by Russell and Wettling will be shown.

This event is free.

For more information on these and other events at the National Museum of Jazz in Harlem, visit http://www.jmih.org/.

Photo Credit: Getty Images

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