A Baroque church musician and a hard-bop saxophonist?

That's the question explored by Passion for Bach and Coltrane, a collaboration by Grammy-nominated quintet  Imani Winds and the  Harlem Quartet, on Tuesday, March 31, 7:30 pm at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth. It's a fitting project for two groups that sit in the category of "classical" but freely range through jazz, Latin and music of the African diaspora.

To set the stage for the program, Imani's french horn player Jeff Scott and poet A.B. Spellman set the stage for the concert with a discussion of Bach, Coltrane and contemporary poetry with Hop Director Mary Lou Aleskie, at 6:30 pm in the Top of the Hop, free admission.

 

Created by Scott, a noted composer, Passion is a seven-movement, evening-length work that quotes two sublime works—Bach's Goldberg Variations and Coltrane's A Love Supreme—to which Scott adds his own movements. The work also weaves in readings by Spellman from his 2008 poetry collection Things I Must Have Known, which speaks to the musical mastery of Bach and Coltrane, and the transcendent spirituality and humanity the two shared. Imani and Harlem realizes this wide-open sound with the help of a jazz trio of Alex Brown, piano, Edward Pérez, bass, and Neal Smith, drums.

 

In tune with Imani's mission of broadening the picture of who plays classical music and what they play, Passion lets the listener appreciate the contrasts and overlaps between two innovative geniuses. Classical Voice North America praised the work's "chaste Baroque music-making and explosive jazz riffs," commenting that, "The blizzards of notes ... came hot from the heart."

 

Passion began with the poetry of Spellman, a writer, educator and activist who also happens to be the father of Imani oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz. In a conversation published by the DePauw School of Music, Scott said A.B. Spellmen "gave [everyone in Imani Winds] a copy of his poetry. I have to admit, it sat on my shelf for a couple of years before I opened it up. I needed some inspiration. 'Let me read some poetry,' I thought. 'Let me open this book that this man gave me.' And then, boom. Mind blown. The music is in the poetry. You hear the rhythm, you hear the pulse, you hear the history. The music flowed after that. It wasn't even an issue of writing the music, it was just how much of it I was going to get away with putting together. I ended up with about an hour and a half that I had to actually trim, but I could have written an opera out of what A.B. gave us."

 

When Scott began hearing that a string quartet needed to be part of the work, he contacted the Harlem Quartet, recalls violinist Melissa White. "You know, when Jeff called to talk about it, I had the 'mind blown' moment. I thought, 'Wow, it's the worlds that my quartet merges.' We do classical and jazz. Our mission is to diversify classical music, so we work to expand the listening of our audiences. To think this project was going to do [that for the] entire night, and finally our groups were going to be on stage together working with a jazz combo.. … It's been a lot of fun, it's been a great journey, it's been a stretch for us as players."

 

Imani has been known through its 20 years of music-making for dynamic playing, adventurous programming, imaginative collaborations and outreach endeavors that have inspired audiences of all ages and backgrounds. The ensemble's playlist embraces traditional chamber music repertoire as well as new work, some of it commissioned by the quintet itself. In addition to Scott and Spellman-Diaz, its members are Brandon Patrick George, flute; Mark Dover, clarinet; and Monica Ellis, bassoon.

 

Harlem Quartet's mission to broaden the audience for string quartet music has taken them around the world; from a 2009 performance at The White House for President and Mrs. Obama, to a 2012 tour of South Africa to a current three-year residency at London's Royal College of Music. The musically versatile ensemble has performed with such distinguished artists as Itzhak Perlman, Misha Dichter, Jeremy Denk and Paquito D'Rivera, and also collaborated with jazz masters Chick Corea and Gary Burton on the album Hot House, a 2013 multi-Grammy Award winning release. Its members—violinists Ilmar Gavilan and Melissa White, violist Jaime Amador and cellist Felix Umansky—are from Cuba, Puerto Rico and the US.

 

MORE ABOUT…

 

Imani Winds' playlist embraces traditional chamber music repertoire as well as new work, some of it commissioned by the quintet itself. Present and future season performances include a Jessie Montgomery composition inspired by her great-grandfather's migration from the American south to the north; and, socially conscious music by Andy Akiho designed to be performed both on the concert stage and in front of immigrant detention centers throughout the country.

Imani Winds is regularly heard on all media platforms including NPR, American Public Media, the BBC, SiriusXM, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

In 2016, Imani Winds received their greatest accolade in their 20 years of music making: a permanent presence in the classical music section of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC.

Imani Winds regularly performs in prominent international concert venues and in chamber music series across the nation. Their travels through the jazz world are highlighted by their association with saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter, woodwind artist and composer Paquito D'Rivera and pianist and composer Jason Moran. Their ambitious project, "Josephine Baker: A Life of Le Jazz Hot!" featured chanteuse René Marie in performances that brought the house down in New York, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Los Angeles and St. Louis.

Imani Winds has six albums on Koch International Classics and E1 Music, including their Grammy-nominated project, The Classical Underground. They have also recorded for Naxos and Blue Note and released Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" on Warner Classics.

In addition to Scott and Spellman-Diaz, its members are Brandon Patrick George, flute; Mark Dover, clarinet; and Monica Ellis, bassoon.

 

New York-based Harlem Quartet, currently serving a three-year residency at London's Royal College of Music, has been praised for its "panache" by The New York Times and hailed in the Cincinnati Enquirer for "bringing a new attitude to classical music, one that is fresh, bracing and intelligent." Since its public debut at Carnegie Hall in 2006, the ensemble has thrilled audiences and students in 47 states as well as in the U.K., France, Belgium, Brazil, Panama, Canada, Venezuela, Japan, and South Africa.

Harlem Quartet has three distinctive characteristics: diverse programming that combines music from the standard string quartet canon with jazz, Latin, and contemporary works; a collaborative approach to performance that is continually broadening the ensemble's repertoire and audience reach through artistic partnerships with other musicians from the classical and jazz worlds; and an ongoing commitment to residency activity and other forms of educational outreach. That outreach includes an annual summer workshop at Music Mountain in Falls Village, Connecticut.

In addition to performing a varied menu of string quartet literature across the country and around the world, Harlem Quartet has collaborated with such distinguished artists as classical pianists Michael Brown, Awadagin Pratt, Misha Dichter, and Fei-Fei; jazz pianists Chick Corea and Aldo López-Gavilán; violist Ida Kavafian; cellist Carter Brey; clarinetists Paquito D'Rivera, Eddie Daniels, Anthony McGill, and David Shifrin; saxophonist Tim Garland; jazz legends Ted Nash, Gary Burton, Stanley Clarke, and John Patitucci; the Shanghai Quartet; and Imani Winds. Highlights of Harlem Quartet's 2018-19 season include debut appearances at Koerner Hall in Toronto (in partnership with D'Rivera) and at the Detroit Jazz Festival (with the Eddie Daniels Quartet), as well as a return to the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, where the quartet closes that organization's 75th anniversary season with a gala performance at Orchestra Hall in collaboration with pianist Leon Fleisher and the Dover, Catalyst, and Attaca string quartets. Also scheduled are appearances at Ithaca College, SUNY Fredonia, Shriver Hall, the Schubert Club (St. Paul, MN), Youngstown State University, Chamber Music Columbus, Dumbarton Concerts, and the Phoenix Chamber Music Society.

Harlem Quartet has been featured on WNBC, CNN, NBC's Today Show, WQXR-FM, and the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and it performed in 2009 for President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House. The quartet made its European debut in October 2009 performing at the residence of the U.S. ambassador to the U.K., and returned to Europe as guest artists and faculty members of the Musica Mundi International Festival in Belgium. In early 2011 the ensemble was featured at the Panama Jazz Festival in Panama City.

The quartet's recording career began in 2007 when White Pine Music issued Take the "A" Train, a release featuring the string quartet version of that jazz standard by Billy Strayhorn; the CD was highlighted that year in the November issue of Stringsmagazine. A second CD, featuring three string quartets by Walter Piston, was released in 2010 by Naxos. The quartet's third recording, released in 2011, is a collaboration with pianist Awadagin Pratt and showcases works by American composer Judith Lang Zaimont. More recently the quartet collaborated with jazz pianist Chick Corea in a Grammy-winning Hot House album that included Corea's "Mozart Goes Dancing," which won a separate Grammy as Best Instrumental Composition. Its latest jazz album, recorded with the Eddie Daniels Quartet and released in June 2018 on Resonance Records, is Heart of Brazil: A Tribute to Egberto Gismonti.

CALENDAR ITEMS

 

Passion for Bach and Coltrane

Imani Winds, Harlem Quartet and A.B. Spellman, orator & poet

Tue, March 31 @ 7:30PM

TIckets $20 and up, 40% off for 18 and younger

Hop.dartmouth.edu or 603.646.2422

Although divided by centuries and continents, J.S. Bach and John Coltrane share a humanity and spirituality that provide the throughline for this seven-movement, evening-length work. Composer and Imani Winds french horn player Jeff Scott quotes two sublime works--Bach's Goldberg Variations and Coltrane's A Love Supreme, adding his own movements and weaves in the poetry of writer, educator and arts activist A.B. Spellman, who has written powerfully about both composers. Imani realizes this wide-open sound world with the help of the Grammy-winning Harlem Quartet and a jazz trio. In tune with Imani's mission of broadening the picture of who plays classical music and what they play, Passion lets the listener appreciate the contrasts and overlaps between two innovative geniuses.

 

Artist Conversation: "Passionate about music and poetry"

Tue, Mar 31, 6:30 pm, Top of the Hop, FREE

Imani's Jeff Scott and poet A.B. Spellman discuss Bach, Coltrane and contemporary poetry with Hop Director Mary Lou Aleskie.