Jazz@Riverbank

OPENING NIGHT

WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 19, 2007	COLLOQUIUM
	CONFERENCE

 

Opening Event and Welcome
With remarks by Randy Weston, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Dr. Billy Taylor, and a special performance
by drummer Susie Ibarra.

The Rotunda, Low Memorial Library, Columbia University
116th Street betw. Broadway and Amsterdam Aves

Directions
7:30 pm
Free

Randy Weston	Toshiko Akiyoshi	Dr. Billy Taylor	Susie Ibarra

Ceremony of Welcome
The Rotunda, Low Memorial Library
Columbia University
7:30 pm

Remarks

Robert G. O'Meally, Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English, Columbia University, and Founding Director Emeritus, The Center for Jazz Studies; George E. Lewis, Edwin M. Case Professor of American Music, Columbia University, and Director, The Center for Jazz Studies; Farah Jasmine Griffin, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, and Associate Director, The Center for Jazz Studies

Maurine D. Knighton, Senior Vice President, Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone; Robin Bell-Stevens, CEO, Jazzmobile, Inc.; Brent Hayes Edwards, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University; Marcia Lynn Sells, Assistant Vice President of Program Development, Columbia University

Solo Performance

Susie Ibarra, drums, introduced by John F. Szwed, Professor of Music, Columbia University

Conversation

Toshiko Akiyoshi, composer and pianist; Randy Weston, composer and pianist; Dr. Billy Taylor, Founding Director, Jazzmobile, Inc.; John F. Szwed, moderator.

 

Percussionist and composer Susie Ibarra received a B.A. from Goddard College, and a music diploma from the Mannes College of Music.  She studied Southeast Asian Kulintang music with Danongan Kalanduyan, and drum set with Buster Smith, Vernel Fournier and Milford Graves.  She has been nominated as "Best Drummer" in the Village Voice, Downbeat, Jazziz (USA) and the Wire (UK). She has performed Southeast Asian gong music, jazz, avant-garde, improvised and solo concert pieces, and has worked with a diverse array of artists, including John Zorn, Dave Douglas, Pauline Oliveros, Derek Bailey, William Parker, Dr. L Subramaniam, Kavita Krishnamurti, John Lindberg, Wadada Leo Smith, Mark Dresser, Thurston Moore, Savath and Savalas, Prefuse 73, and Yo La Tengo. Ibarra has taught in residencies and workshops at the Walker Art Center, Mills College, Bard College, Swarthmore College, the University of Michigan, the Juilliard and Manhattan Schools of Music, the New School, and the Fundacio Joan Miro in Barcelona.  She currently performs solo works, and tours with her Susie Ibarra Trio, with violinist Jennifer Choi and pianist Craig Taborn; Mephista, a collective electro-acoustic trio with pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and laptop artist Ikue Mori; Shapechanger, a collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa; her children’s music  project, Mundo Niños; and Electric Kulintang (Filipino trance music) with Roberto Rodriguez  For more information, see http://www.susieibarra.com

Manchurian-born composer/arranger, bandleader, and pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi began piano training at the age of six, and her career as a jazz pianist in 1946 in Japan. In 1952 she formed her own group and was spotted by Norman Granz, who recorded her in 1953, making her the first Japanese jazz musician to be recorded by a major US record label. Akiyoshi came to the United States in 1956, appearing at the Newport Jazz Festival and touring with her own ensembles. She also performed with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra and Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra as a featured guest soloist. Moving to Los Angeles in 1972 with her husband, tenor saxophonist and flutist Lew Tabackin, they formed their Los Angeles Band. In New York in 1982, the couple formed the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra, featuring Lew Tabackin, which debuted at Carnegie Hall in 1983's Kool Jazz Festival. The Orchestra, which has been voted Number One four times Down Beat Maga­zine's Big Band category, has recorded nearly two dozen albums, fourteen of which received Grammy Award nomina­tions.  She has twice received Silver and Gold medals from Japan's major jazz magazine, Swing Journal, and the Nigerian jazz magazine Roots named her "Best Jazz Band Leader In The World" in 1988.

Now recognized as a major figure in jazz composition, Akiyoshi was the first woman to win the Best Arranger and Composer awards (which she has won seven times) in Down Beat Magazine's Readers Poll. In 1984, she was the subject of the documentary film, Jazz is my Native Language.  In 1996, she published her autobiography, Life With Jazz, which is currently in its third Japanese printing. In 1997, she received the Shijuhohsho Medal from the Emperor Of Japan. She has received an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music, and in 2000, she was inducted into the Rutgers University Institute of Jazz Studies/New Jersey Jazz Society Hall of Fame. In 2004, she received the Emperor’s Medal, Kyokujitsu Shojusho, In 2007, Akiyoshi was named a Jazz Master by the US National Endowment for the Arts, and was named a Jazz Living Legend by the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

The distinguished ambassador of the jazz community to the world-at-large, Dr. Billy Taylor's recording career spans nearly six decades.  Starting out with Ben Webster's Quartet on New York's 52nd Street, the young musician became the house pianist at Birdland, the legendary jazz club where he performed with such celebrated masters as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. In the 1950s, Billy Taylor has been leading his own Trio, as well as performing with the most influential jazz musicians of the twentieth century. He has also composed over three hundred and fifty songs, as well as works for theatre, dance and symphony orchestras. A Duke Ellington Fellow at Yale University, Dr. Taylor received his Masters and Doctorate in Music Education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  He is a highly regarded teacher, and a member of the Hall of Fame for the International Association for Jazz Education. An international ambassador for music, Dr. Taylor visited the Soviet Union in 1976 as a member of the International Commission of Distinguished American Composers and Educators and performed in the Third International Music Festival in Leningrad in 1988. He has recently participated in cultural exchanges in Hungary, Mexico City, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Beijing, among others.

A familiar figure to television viewers, Dr. Taylor has served as arts correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning, and has worked extensively with the US National Public Radio,  including "Taylor Made Jazz,", the thirteen-week "Dizzy's Diamond," celebrating Dizzy Gillespie's seventy-fifth birthday, "Billy Taylor's Jazz at the Kennedy Center," and the award-winning series  "Jazz Alive!" Dr. Taylor serves on the National Council of the Arts, and as Artistic Advisor for Jazz to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, he developed the acclaimed Louis Armstrong Legacy series and the annual Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival.  Dr. Taylor is the recipient of two Peabody Awards, an Emmy, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Down Beat Magazine.  Now in his eighties, and officially retired from active touring and recording, he nonetheless remains active with educational work, and a full schedule of speaking engagements and appearances on radio and television.

Randy Weston is one of the world's foremost pianists and composers, a true innovator and visionary. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1926, Weston received his earliest training from private teachers, and grew up among peers as saxophonist Cecil Payne, bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik, and trumpeter Ray Copeland, and the steady influx of great jazz musicians who frequented Brooklyn clubs and jam sessions. In the late 1940s, Weston began playing piano with rhythm and blues bands. In 1954, Weston worked days as a cook at the Music Inn educational retreat in Lenox, Massachusetts, while playing the piano at night. There, the head of Riverside Records, Orrin Keepnews, heard Weston and produced his first recording, "Cole Porter in a Modern Mood." Weston's close and fruitful musical partnership with trombonist-arranger Melba Liston resulted in some of Weston's best recordings. During this period, Weston wrote many of his most frequently recorded compositions, including "Saucer Eyes," "Pam's Waltz," "Little Niles," and perhaps his best-known,  "Hi-Fly."

Weston's interest in the African continent was sparked at an early age, and in the early 1960s, he began lecturing and performing in Africa. In 1967, he performed in 14 African countries on a State Department tour.  Weston eventually settled in Rabat, Morocco, but 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 his native Brooklyn, traveling around the world with ensembles that include trombonist Benny Powell, and his longtime musical director, saxophonist T.K. Blue. In recent years, Weston's collaborations with the Master Musicians of Gnawa have been performed at the Kennedy Center. He has taught at Harvard University, received an honorary doctorate from Brooklyn College, and has received many honors: Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters (1997); Black Music Star Award of the Arts Critics and Reviewers Association of Ghana (2000); National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master (2001); "Composer of the Year" from Downbeat Magazine (1994, 1996, and 1999). For more information, see http://www.randyweston.info

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COLLOQUIUM

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2007 Colloquium: Conversations:  Improvisation in Everyday Life The Rotunda, Low Memorial Library, Columbia University 116th Street betw. Broadway and Amsterdam Avenues Directions 7:30 pm Free	REGISTRATION FOR COLLOQUIUM www.worldleaders.columbia.edu

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