TUE NOV 13 2018 / 8PM
Still Dreaming
Joshua Redman, Ron Miles, Scott Colley, Brian Blade CHAN CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS AT UBC
“The heart and soul of jazz is playing what you
feel in the moment, and the ‘you’ is a very, very important part of that concept. You’re trying to find your voice and tell your story, but in a way that connects with the other musicians you’re playing with, and with the audience. The great bands of jazz exemplify that philosophy.”
– Joshua Redman, Houstonia Magazine, 2017
Still Dreaming PRESENTED BY THE CHAN CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
Pre-show Talk 7:15pm, Royal Bank Cinema With Nou Dadoun Concert 8:00pm, Chan Shun Concert Hall Joshua Redman saxophone Ron Miles trumpet Scott Colley bass Brian Blade drums Set list to be announced from the stage. There will be no intermission. Please remember to turn off your phones, and note that photography and recording are not permitted. Thank you!
ƛ̓a tə n̓a Chan Centre for the Performing Arts ʔam̓ət ʔi ʔə tə n̓a šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmaʔɬ təməxʷ The Chan Centre for the Performing Arts is situated within the heart of Musqueam traditional territory
4
Still Dreaming Drawing inspiration, purpose (and of course, their name!) from the great Old and New Dreams quartet, Still Dreaming with Joshua Redman, Ron Miles, Scott Colley and Brian Blade seeks to affirm, in their own way, the musical exploration and experimentation which defined one of the seminal jazz bands of the '70s and '80s. Old and New Dreams included Ornette Coleman alumni Don Cherry on trumpet, Dewey Redman on tenor saxophone, Charlie Haden on bass, and Ed Blackwell on drums - all of whom went on to interpret and expand upon Coleman’s revolutionary musical vision in their own uniquely personal ways throughout their careers. And when the four of them came together at various points from 1976-87, the results were nothing short of magical. Writer Tom Moon, in his book 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die, aptly describes the music of Old And New Dreams in terms of its “lyrical subversion.” It was a group committed to “free jazz" - pushing the limits, often dancing on the fringes, at times reveling in thorny abstraction, but also with the desire and ability to communicate directly and viscerally, and always in service of beauty. When Redman came up with the idea to partner with Miles, Colley, and Blade for this project, he did so with the knowledge that each band member’s artistic history was in certain fundamental ways linked to his corresponding instrumentalist in Old and New Dreams. The connection between Dewey Redman and Joshua Redman is perhaps most obvious as father and son tenor saxophonists. Of all the trumpet players on the jazz scene today, it would be difficult to think of one more thoroughly and deeply influenced by the sound and style of Don Cherry than is Ron Miles. As a young up-and-coming bassist, Scott Colley attended the California Institute of the Arts in large part to study with Charlie Haden, who ended up becoming perhaps his most important teacher and musical mentor. And Brian Blade represents a modern-day link to the New Orleans drumming tradition that gave birth to Ed Blackwell's groundbreaking approach. Busy as these four musicians are with their myriad musical projects, hearing them perform together as Still Dreaming will likely be a rare opportunity, an uncommon musical adventure - informed by the past, but looking toward the future, and navigated by the now.
5
Exploring the role of the arts and artists in society. chancentre.com/connects
Pre-show Talk with Nou Dadoun
7:15pm: Royal Bank Cinema, Chan Centre Joshua Redman’s new Still Dreaming project works on a number of different levels. At the surface, it’s a musical continuation of his saxophonist father Dewey Redman’s Old and New Dreams. That group itself was an extrapolation of the groundbreaking Ornette Coleman quintet of the late ‘60s and was made up of Coleman alumni including Don Cherry, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell besides Dewey Redman himself. Of course, there are other historic and stylistic parallels between the two bands besides the pivot from father to son. This pre-concert talk will explore and elucidate those and the generational shifts between Dewey and Joshua Redman, both musical and personal. Nou Dadoun is a music radio host and journalist with interests in jazz, women in jazz, jazz in civil rights and social issues, South African jazz, creative music, world musics, and multidisciplinary arts in general. He has a Ph.D in Computer Science from UBC and works as a senior software engineer in research and development of computer security technologies.
Kealoha
UBC School of Music Fanfares A brass fanfare will be performed in the lobby at 7:30pm and 7:45pm. This new piece has been commissioned by the Chan Centre from UBC composition student Jackson Bell as part of an ongoing partnership with the UBC School of Music. Thunderbird Brass Silas Friesen Trumpet; Matheus Moraes Trumpet; Kristin Ranshaw Horn; Kevin Jackson Trombone; Takami Hayashi Tuba Jackson Bell is a saxophonist, drummer, and composer from Surrey, BC. He is currently completing his fourth year of general music studies at UBC, studying with Dr. Julia Nolan and Dr. Stephen Chatman. Fanfare for a New Journey combines familiar idioms with unfamiliar rhythms to create a sense of uneasiness and excitement. Much of the inspiration for this piece comes from the music of Joshua Redman and his journey of taking beloved jazz traditions to newer heights.
7
Still Dreaming Newer Dreams By Taryn Plater From the very beginning, jazz music has challenged convention and pushed boundaries. Every jazz great through history was engaged in their own search for new boundaries to push, and their legacies became the new directions they mapped for future musicians. It was the case for Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and today we watch as Joshua Redman and his band take inspiration from their musical mentors and run with it – finding newer dreams, and newer boundaries to push. Now-legendary alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman was particularly known for rejecting the best practices of his day in the interest of playing originally and intuitively. This is one of the principles on which Old and New Dreams (a group made up of Ornette Coleman Band alumni) was founded. As early as the 1950s, Coleman was playing what is now categorized as free jazz. His contributions to jazz were controversial, wave-making, and they ultimately directed the future course of the genre. In famously rejecting the hard distinctions between soloist and ensemble, Coleman was able to create more free-flowing forms, using a song’s melody to guide improvisation and creating new chord structures with each performance. His third album was ambitiously titled The Shape of Jazz to Come (after the insistence of his producer) – in hindsight, a highly fitting title. In the late ‘50s to early ‘60s, Coleman had the opportunity to connect with similarly-minded players. Ed Blackwell, Charlie Haden, and Don Cherry were all members of Coleman’s quartet and shared a desire to do something new. Departing from bebop’s meticulously virtuosic style, their approach to collective improvisation created a category of jazz governed by intuition and a new set of formal rules.
“We were after something like pure spontaneity, improvising on the feeling of the tunes we were playing rather than on the chord structures. When we would try that individually, back in the mid-1950's, the musicians we were playing with would get upset. But when we finally got together, we were able to play the most spontaneous music we'd ever played.”- Charlie Haden, New York Times, 1982 In the late 1960s, a tenor sax player named Dewey Redman joined Coleman’s group. Redman had grown up with Coleman in Fort Worth, Texas and the two were even in a high school marching band together. Appearing on seven Coleman releases, Redman was praised for supporting Coleman’s alto sax as well as holding his own solo voice. It was Redman, Blackwell, Haden, and Cherry who would go on to become the historic super group Old and New Dreams. The members of the quartet brought together a mosaic of far-reaching musical traditions, from Redman’s rhythm and blues to Cherry and Blackwell’s “global folk-jazz.” Combined with tight playing and total creative freedom, the group’s eclectic influences made their 1976 debut album a triumphant success. Thanks to groups like Old and New Dreams, jazz has existed since the late 20th century as a genre with virtually no musical limitations. In one century, it has jumped from swing to avant-garde to funk, incorporating countless subgenres and crossovers on the way. Now in a world where seemingly everything new has already been done, how can musicians make an original contribution? 8
Finding new boundaries to push Taking the legacy of Old and New Dreams as inspiration, Joshua Redman, Ron Miles, Scott Colley, and Brian Blade are defining their own approach to collective improvisation and formal freedom. They experiment with free jazz elements, but maintain an “elegant balance between logic and risk” (NPR, 2018). It is this balance that creates Still Dreaming’s broad appeal. The four members of Still Dreaming have significant musical and personal connections to the members of Old and New Dreams. Joshua Redman is the son of Dewey Redman, Ron Miles’ playing is greatly influenced by both Don Cherry and Ornette Coleman, Scott Colley studied with Charlie Haden at Cal Arts, and Brian Blade and Ed Blackwell both bring similar drumming styles influenced by their shared hometown of Louisiana. These parallels make the work all the more intriguing as a broader indication of the trajectory of a genre. Just as free jazz originally arose from dissatisfaction with constraints of bebop (mirroring the social revolutions of the ‘60s), the large strides artists like Joshua Redman are making today can be seen as a reaction to free jazz. Still Dreaming shows a trend towards a type of jazz that is sophisticated and intelligent, but still familiar and welcoming – a difficult balance for any artist to achieve. Where Old and New Dreams pushed the bounds of what jazz could be in the ‘60s and ‘70s with “elastic, ecstatic and volatile group cohesion” (NPR, 2018), Joshua Redman and co. take a more reasoned approach with nevertheless “evident sincerity and total commitment” (NPR, 2018) to the group that inspired the project. Even where Still Dreaming departs from its predecessor’s work, the album’s stand-alone artistic merit is obvious.
“This is a band where we feel pretty comfortable with [improvisatory] language. I love playing in situations that are really open. It allows for true collective improvisation. In a way, we may be trying to collapse the distinction between playing something that is formally ‘free’ and something that isn’t.” - Joshua Redman, Houstonia Magazine, 2017 Just like that, Still Dreaming answers jazz’s omnipresent challenge to “do something new.” Coleman collapsed the distinction between ensemble and soloist in his search for formal freedom. Now, Still Dreaming’s members work toward the place where complete freedom and the guidance offered by formal boundaries intersect. In other words, Redman and co. are standing on the shoulders of giants, creating their own legacy for future generations of jazz musicians to uncover.
About the author Taryn Plater is in her third year working as Marketing & Communications Assistant at the Chan Centre as part of the UBC Work Learn program. She is pursuing a double major in music and linguistics at UBC, as well as a Master of Management, and is passionate about expanding the role of the performing arts in our society. 9
Upcoming Events at the Chan Centre Full details at chancentre.com Nov 17 at 7:30pm: UBC Symphonic Wind Ensemble Presented by the UBC School of Music Nov 18 at 3pm: Andrea Lucchesini, piano Presented by the Vancouver Recital Society Nov 21 at 7:30pm: UBC Concert Winds Presented by the UBC School of Music Nov 23 at 7:30pm: The Nameless Presented by the 45th Avenue Jazz Band, Telus Studio Theatre Nov 23 at 8pm: An Evening with The Tallest Man on Earth Presented by Live Nation, SOLD OUT Dec 1 at 7:30pm: University Singers, UBC Choral Union & UBC Symphony Presented by the UBC School of Music
Dec 2 at 2:30pm: Christmas at the Chan Presented by Trinity Western University Choirs Dec 9 at 3pm: Bach Collegium Japan – Bach, Handel, Vivaldi Presented by Early Music Vancouver
Dec 16 at 3pm: Dreams and Wishes Presented by the Vancouver Pops Performing Arts Society Dec 21 + 22 at 8pm: Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Presented by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra Dec 23 at 3pm: Festive Cantatas: A Monteverdi Christmas Vespers Presented by Early Music Vancouver
10
The Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at UBC Joyce Hinton Co-Managing Director Cameron McGill Co-Managing Director Carl Armstrong Events & Customer Service Manager Wendy Atkinson Programming & Rentals Manager Lloyd Balser Head Audio Technician Kara Gibbs Marketing & Communications Manager David Humphrey Production Manager Rebecca Isaac Production Clerk Flora Lew Finance Manager Janice Lew Rentals & Programming Assistant Glenda Makela Financial & Programming Clerk Trevor Mangion Ticket Operations Manager Chloe Martin-Cabanne Operations Clerk Veronica Maynard Administration & Finance Clerk Caitlin McKee (on leave) Artistic Presenting Manager Derek Meehan Head Stage Technician Claire Mohun Marketing & Communications Coordinator Kirsty Munro Assistant Artistic Presenting Manager James Perrella Assistant Head Audio/Stage Technician Andrew Riter Assistant Technical Director & Head Lighting Technician Nadia Roberts Events & Front of House Coordinator Lyndsey Roberts Ticket Office Supervisor Jennifer Sorko Artistic Presenting Manager Members of Cupe 2950 Front of House, Stage, and Ticketing Staff Luisa Henz Taryn Plater
Artistic Presentations Assistant, Work Learn Student Marketing & Communications Assistant, Work Learn Student
Administration Office
T: 604.822.9197
E: chan.centre@ubc.ca
chancentre.com /chan.centre.ubc
Ticket Office
T: 604.822.2697
@ChanCentre
E: chan.tickets@ubc.ca
/ChanCentreUBC
Graphic Design by Copilot Design Media Relations by Murray Paterson Marketing Group The Chan Centre would like to thank our 2018/2019 series sponsors: The Chan Endowment Fund and the UBC Faculty of Arts
11
CHAN CENTRE PRESENTS SERIES FEB 17 Bobby McFerrin: Circlesongs SOLD OUT
MAR 2 Ladysmith Black Mambazo with Habib Koité and Bassekou Kouyate SOLD OUT APR 11 Cristina Pato Quartet APR 17 Mariza APR 27 Anoushka Shankar BEYOND WORD SERIES FEB 24 No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks
Cristina Pato Mariza
No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks
Anoushka Shankar
chancentre.com