Randy Weston © Andrea Canter

With over five decades of performance, composition, and teaching, pianist Randy Weston has devoted his life to connecting jazz to its roots in African music and culture, and through his music, translating that connection to western audiences. "Weston has the biggest sound of any jazz pianist since Ellington and Monk, as well as the richest most inventive beat," notes 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." With his African Rhythms Trio, Weston will bring his creative melding of heritage and reverence to the Yoshi's on Oakland on Friday, July 13th and Saturday, July 14th for a performance of music that is sure to inspire and inform.

Alex Blake © Andrea Canter

Neil Clarke has studied African percussion for over 35 years. His work has covered every genre from folkloric, jazz, and pop, to R& B, gospel, and classical. In addition to Randy Weston, he has worked with Harry BelaXXe, Dianne Reeves, David Sanborn, Miriam Makeba, Letta Mbulu, Paul Winter, the Spirit Ensemble, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the International African American Ballet, and many others. He performed in the Broadway production of Timbuktu and in the feature film Beat Street, as well as on numerous television appearances.

Neil Clarke © Andrea Canter

Randy Weston has spent most of his career combining the rich music of the African continent with the African-American tradition of jazz, mixing rhythms and melodies into a hybrid musical stew.

Weston received his earliest training from private teachers in a household that nurtured his budding musicianship. Growing up in Brooklyn, Weston was influenced by such peers as saxophonist Cecil Payne and trumpeter Ray Copeland as well as the steady influx of great jazz musicians who frequented Brooklyn clubs and jam sessions on a regular basis. Such musicians as Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington would have a lasting influence on Weston's music, both in terms of his piano playing and composition.

After a 1945 stint in the Army, Weston began playing piano with such rhythm-and-blues bands as Bull Moose Jackson and Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson. At the Music Inn educational retreat in Lenox, Massachusetts, in 1954, he took work as a cook during the summer, while playing the piano at night. The head of Riverside Records, Orrin Keepnews, heard him and signed Weston to do a record of Cole Porter standards.

Weston's recording sessions frequently included contributions from his Brooklyn neighborhood buddies Copeland, Payne, and bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik. It was at this early juncture that he also began his long and fruitful musical partnership with trombonist-arranger Melba Liston (a listing of some of the albums on which they collaborated can be found in the Liston Selected Discography), a relationship that would continue until her death in 1999, forming some of Weston's best recordings.

Weston's interest in the African continent was sparked at an early age, and he lectured and performed in Africa in the early 1960s. He toured 14 African countries with his ensemble in 1967 on a State Department tour, eventually settling in Rabat, Morocco. He later moved to Tangier, opening the African Rhythms Club in 1969. It was in Morocco that Weston first forged unique collaborations with Berber and Gnawan musicians, infusing his jazz with African music and rhythms.

Since returning to the U.S. in 1972, he has lived in Brooklyn, traveling extensively overseas with bands that generally include trombonist Benny Powell and longtime musical director, saxophonist Talib Kibwe (aka T.K. Blue). In recent years, a number of Weston's U.S. concert appearances have been true events, including 1998 and 1999 Brooklyn and Kennedy Center collaborations with the Master Musicians of Gnawa, and a triumphant 1998 recreation of his masterwork suite "Uhuru Africa" in Brooklyn. Many of Weston's compositions, such as "Hi Fly" and "Berkshire Blues," have become jazz standards. In 2010, Weston's autobiography, African Rhythms, was published.

(Randy Weston biographic information was adapted from teh NEA Jazz Masters website: http://www.nea.gov/honors/jazz/index.html)

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites