A
Woodstock
Jazz Festival is scheduled the evening of October 4 at the Bearsville
Theater. It’s an appropriate, but long overdue, re-addition to the cultural
fabric of this Catskill Mountains town, an idyllic home for all sorts of
artists – actors, musicians, painters, sculptors and writers – dating back to
the late 1800s. Woodstock has a thriving presence as a summer arts colony.
A significant roster of jazz musicians have
called Woodstock and its surrounding cities and villages home in recent decades.
They include drummers Brian Blade, Jimmy Cobb and Jack DeJohnette, composers
Karl Berger and Carla Bley, guitarist Pat Metheny, keyboard player John Medeski,
and its most recent major addition to that list, saxophonist Sonny Rollins.
The town hosted a one-time Woodstock Music Festival back in 1981 as a 10th anniversary celebration of the founding of the Creative Music Studio by Berger and Ornette Coleman. That show featured Anthony Braxton, Chick Corea, Jack DeJohnette, Lee Konitz, Pat Metheny and Miroslav Vitouš, among others.
Here's a look at this year's schedule. Drummer Jack DeJohnette
will be back in the lineup October 4 in a quartet with John Medeski, guitarist
John Scofield, and bassist Larry Grenadier. Drummer Ben Perowsky, saxophonist
Chris Speed and Medeski will perform in their trio project Red Cred.
Pianist Uri Caine will complete the program with a solo piano set. The festival
is presented by the local broadcast station Radio Woodstock (WDST).
The one-night event is something that the co-producers – Perowsky and locally based artist manger Liz Penta – hope to turn into an annual event with multiple venues and an educational component. As Perowsky sees it: “This town was made for a festival like this…. Liz and I are both dedicated to creating a festival that will spark a new musical dialogue amongst generations."
Long
may it live – and thrive.
No comments:
Post a Comment