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Sierra Club
2008-09 Northrop Jazz Season! Print E-mail
Written by Andrea Canter, Contributing Editor   
Thursday, 03 July 2008
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Charlie Haden
Squashing any speculation that the Northrop Jazz Season had tooted its last horn, the University of Minnesota announced a somewhat shorter but star-studded, politically charged new series beginning in September. The four concerts, held at Ted Mann Auditorium and the Walker Art Center’s McGuire Theater, include Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra with Carla Bley; a quartet let by multi-reedist Yusef Lateef; acclaimed vocalist Kurt Elling performing in tribute to the Coltrane/Hartman partnership with an unusual configuration of jazz trio, string quartet and saxophone; and a much-anticipated interpretation of Thelonious Monk’s 1959 Town Hall concert by innovative pianist Jason Moran.

Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra with Carla Bley (September 27, 8 pm; Ted Mann Auditorium). Several factors converge to make this opening concert a landmark event. Acclaimed bassist/composer Charlie Haden and his LMO were the first concert scheduled for Northrop’s first Jazz Season (1993-94). Formed nearly 40 years ago as a musical protest against the Vietnam War, Haden periodically reassembles the band, but only “ at key political/historical moments such as this year's elections," according to Haden’s press release. Thus the impending Presidential elections served as the impetus for a new tour of the LMO, reuniting Haden with long-time collaborator, pianist and bandleader Carla Bley, a member of the original LMO. The two artists joined together on 2004’s Not In Our Name as a statement against the international policies of the Bush Administration, and again are working together on a new project addressing the issues facing voters in the 2008 election. Bley was last heard in the Twin Cities with her own band on the Ted Mann stage in 2003. Historically, Haden and Bley have taken the left fork in the political road and there is no reason to expect a change in direction now! (Even if the concert is scheduled only a few weeks after the Republican Convention in St. Paul!) As Dan Emerson wrote in the Pioneer Press, “it should be provocative, pungent and not politician-friendly.”

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Yusef Lateef
One of the first jazz musicians to incorporate global traditions into his compositions and selection of instruments, 87-year-old Yusef Lateef (December 6, 8 pm, McGuire Theater of the Walker Art Center) has not appeared in the Twin Cities in over a decade. Playing a wide array of wind instruments, including tenor saxophone, flute, oboe, bamboo flute, shanai, shofar, argol, sarewa and Taiwan koto, the Grammy-winning Lateef has pioneered the African American tradition of autophysiopsychic music — that which comes from one’s spiritual, physical and emotional self. Born William Emanuel Huddleston, Lateef moved to Detroit as a young child and grew up surrounded by its many jazz influences, ultimately playing tenor sax for swing bands before joining Dizzy Gillespie’s Orchestra in 1949. He converted to Islam in the mid-50s and continued music studies on flute and oboe as well as touring with Charles Mingus, Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Babatunde Olatunji in the 1960s. In the early 1980s he spent a few years studying the Fulani flute (sarewa) in Nigeria. Throughout his career, he has appeared on hundreds of recordings and composed works for small ensembles and full orchestras. At the Walker Art Center, Lateef will join another pair of multi-instrumentalists and former cohorts at the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Douglas Ewart and Roscoe Mitchell. Another frequently collaborator, percussionist Adam Rudolph, will round out the quartet. This concert is cosponsored by the Walker Art Center.

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Kurt Elling © Andrea Canter
On February 20th (8 pm, Ted Mann Auditorium), the highly regarded modern vocalist Kurt Elling presents “Dedicated to You: Elling Sings Coltrane/Hartman.” In 1963, legends John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman issued the landmark recording of classic ballads. In 2008, Elling reinterprets this collaboration with Grammy-winning saxophonist Ernie Watts, Elling’s regular, telepathic trio led by pianist Lawrence Hobgood, and the electrified, electrifying string ensemble,  ETHEL. Elling, arguably the greatest jazz singer of his generation, has appeared in the Twin Cities on a number of occasions in the past five years, but never in a room bigger than the Dakota Jazz Club. His use of scat and vocalese, his original lyrics for such masterpieces as Coltrane’s “Revelation,” and his interpretations of such great instrumental works as Dexter Gordon’s sax solo on “Body and Soul” have put him at the creative apogee of modern jazz artists.

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Jason Moran
Jason Moran closes out the Northrop season (May 9th, 7 and 9:30 pm at Walker Art Center) on a similarly creative note, taking yet another classic jazz recording, The Thelonious Monk Orchestra at Town Hall (Riverside, 1959) and giving it a 21st century remodeling. Like his commissioned staging at the Walker of “Artist in Residence” in 2005, Moran’s new “In My Mind: Monk at Town Hall” will be a multi-media event, with samples of Monk's music, conversations and photos integrated with original interpretations of Monk tunes. It was Monk, the creator of some of the most revered and quirky melodies in the jazz canon, who was a significant source of inspiration for Moran to pursue piano studies. Named the first Playboy Jazz Artist of the Year for 2005 and a “three-peat” winner of Downbeat’s Critics Poll (Rising Star Jazz Artist, Rising Star Composer and Rising Star Acoustic Piano), the Houston native has followed a fast-rising trajectory since his days touring with hot alto saxophonist Greg Osby. With “one of the most independent minds now working in jazz” (New York Times), Moran’s music crosses genres and generations with a singular energy and imagination, as “one of the most potent suppliers of unpredictable music around” (JazzTimes). And as we observed when Moran was Walker’s “Artist in Residence,” he not only supplies “unpredictable music,” he defines and reinvents the genre. This concert is cosponsored by the Walker Art Center.
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Carla Bley

The 2008-09 season promises to be the most significant in the history of jazz at Northrop, perhaps the most modern in recent years, the most political, and in the end, the most satisfying. Order season tickets today!

Ted Mann Auditorium is located at 2128 S. 4th Street, University of Minnesota West Bank Campus in Minneapolis; the Walker Art Center is located at 1750 Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis. Full season tickets available now for $128; single concert tickets go on sale August 4th for $40 each. FFI and tickets, call 612-624-2345.

 

 

 

 
 
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