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from the program booklet of the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival

Humanity and the Importance of Jazz

God has brought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create – and from this capacity has flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy that have allowed man to cope with his environment and many different situations.

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life’s difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph. This is triumphant music.

Modern Jazz has continued in this tradition, singing the songs of a more complicated urban existence. When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instrument.

It is no wonder that so much of the search for identity among American Negroes was championed by Jazz musicians. Long before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of “racial identity” as a problem for a multi-racial world, musicians were returning to their roots to affirm that which was stirring within their souls.

Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music. It has strengthened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits were down. And now, Jazz is exported to the world. For in the particular struggle of the Negro in America there is something akin to the universal struggle of modern man. Everybody has the Blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith. In music, especially this broad category called Jazz, there is a stepping stone towards all of these.

“VisionFugitive is a new responsibility to the evolution of music, musicianship and musicality.  It is the revelation that comes with rejuvenation in any art form; the individual perception of collective vision; the focus on a new social-logic.”– Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris

WORLD PREMIERE

JD Allen VisionFugitive!

Conducted by Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris

at

THE 2011 NYC WINTER JAZZ FESTIVAL

Friday, January 7, 2011, 8:15pm

at (le) Poisson Rouge

featuring

JD ALLEN, tenor + LAWRENCE D. ‘BUTCH’ MORRIS, conductor

with

GREGG AUGUST, bass

DEZRON DOUGLAS, bass

RUDY ROYSTON, drums

JEREMY ‘BEAN’ CLEMONS, drums

DANNY SEDOWNICK, percussion

DUANE EUBANKS, trumpet

STACY DILLARD, soprano

LOGAN RICHARDSON, alto

BEN WALTZER, piano

BRYAN CARROTT, vibes

VisionFugitive is a new responsibility to the evolution of music, musicianship and musicality.  It is the revelation that comes with rejuvenation in any art form; the individual perception of collective vision; the focus on a new social-logic.

This collaboration between JD Allen and Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris has been a long time coming and may prove to be a major pinnacle from which a music must be judged.

Hailed by the New York Times as “a tenor saxophonist with an enigmatic, elegant and hard-driving style,” JD Allen is a bright rising light on today’s international jazz scene. His unique and compelling voice on the instrument – the result of a patient and painstaking confrontation with the fundamentals of the art – has recently earned Allen a blaze of critical attention signaling his ascension to the upper ranks of the contemporary jazz world: Downbeat Critics Polls Rising Star finalist in the 2010, 2009 + 2008; I AM I AM and SHINE! TOP 10 ALBUM OF THE YEAR in over 25 publications worldwide including; NPR’S Top 5 Albums of 2009 (Shine!), JazzTimes Top 50 Albums of 2009 (Shine!), Village Voice #9 Jazz Album of the Year (Shine!) and Boston Globe Top Jazz Album of the Year, 2009 (Shine!). His third release on the Sunnyside label, VICTORY! is slated for early 2011.

Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris is recognized internationally as the principal theorist and practitioner in the evolution of Conduction®:

The practice of conveying and interpreting a lexicon of directives to modify or construct sonic arrangement or composition; a structure – content exchange between composer /conductor /instrumentalist that provides immediate possibility to alter orinitiate harmony, melody, rhythm, tempo, progression, articulation, phrasing or form by manipulating pitch, dynamics (volume/intensity/density), timbre, duration, silence and order in real-time.

Mr. Morris’s work redefines the roles of composer, conductor, arranger and performer, and bridges the gap between the composer, interpreter and improviser. Since 1974, his career has been distinguished by unique and outstanding international contributions to television, film, theater, dance, radio, interdisciplinary collaborations, concerts and recordings. He has collaborated with countless musicians, choreographers, filmmakers and writers, and is an advisor to many institutions worldwide.

Together they constitute “the closing of ranks” to further facilitate the long awaited, much stronger march toward the evolution of music in general and Jazz in particular.

www.myspace.com/jdallen11

www.conduction.us

http://butchmorris.downloadsnow.net/

http://www.phocusagencyevents.it/lucianorossetti/conduction/index.html

www.winterjazzfest.com

Kim Smith

public relations

718 858 2557

ksmithpr@earthlink.net

The function of the artist is to express reality as felt.

Sonny Rollins with Paul Jeffrey from Imago records & production on Vimeo.

via Curtis Fowlkes

The Ben Waltzer Quintet (Friday and Saturday) The pianist Ben Waltzer favors both lyricism and exploration in his music, and he works with musicians well equipped to split the difference; his quintet includes the trumpeter Duane Eubanks, the tenor saxophonist Bill McHenry, the bassist Dwayne Burno and the drummers Eric McPherson (10/22), Otis Brown III (10/23). At 9 and 10:30 p.m., Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia Street, West Village , (212) 989-9319, corneliastreetcafe.com; $10 cover, with a one-drink minimum

Photo by David Goldstein

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This is one of my favorite cuts of music of all time. It’s another example of how the title really speaks to what’s happening in the music. This references Marcus Garvey, the great Pan-Africanist in the States during the late ’10s and 20s, who died in England in 1940, mistreated, and his organization decentralized by the same tactics used against the Black Panthers some years later. The piece references that history, talking about self-determination, but then it also has a haunting, ghostly quality; the melody is so powerful, as is the fact that Abbey doesn’t sing any words.

…He always plays something and then leaves some space, and then plays something else and leaves some space. He calls, he answers, he answers, and then he leaves some space. He always used to say that there’s always room. Get to your shit quick, make a statement, and in making that statement, the things that you don’t play are just as important as the things you do. That always seemed to be a theme for him, and he utilized it in every component of his career. Always some space for others.