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Please join us on Wednesday, June 23, 2004 from 8-10pm at Slought Foundation for a live concert by Dave Burrell performing the music of Jelly Roll Morton on an Aeolian Technola Player Piano (1911).
Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton (1890-1941), perhaps the first great jazz
composer, is credited as the transitional figure between ragtime and
contemporary jazz piano. He spent the early part of the 1900s in New
Orleans - as a pianist, pimp, minstrel-show entertainer, comedian and
hustler - and, until 1922, in Los Angeles. Morton began recording in
Chicago in 1923, then bandleading with his Red Hot Peppers, making some of
the classic early jazz recordings for the Gennett and Victor labels. Best
known for songs like "King Porter Stomp," "Grandpa's Spells," "Mr. Jelly
Roll," "Black Bottom Stomp," "The Chant," "Original Jelly Roll Blues,"
"Doctor Jazz," "Wild Man Blues," "Don't You Leave Me Here," and "Sweet
Substitute," his recordings featured some of best New Orleans musicians
including Kid Ory, Barney Bigard, Johnny Dobbs, Johnny St. Cyr and Baby
Dobbs. The popularity of big bands, the Depression and the shift to New
York as the center of jazz, gradually pushed Morton into obscurity. However
in 1938 (and released a decade later) Alan Lomax recorded him in an
extensive and colorful series of musical interviews for the Library of
Congress. Jelly Roll died just before the Dixieland revival rescued so many
of his peers from musical obscurity. He blamed his declining health on a
voodoo spell.
Since graduating from Berklee in the mid-1960's, Dave Burrell has established himself as one of the most innovative and original pianists and composers while collaborating with leaders in contemporary jazz. He appears
on over 100 recordings which include the critically acclaimed and pivotal
collaborations with saxophonists Archie Shepp, Pharaoh Sanders, Marion Brown
and David Murray. Among his major works are the groundbreaking jazz opera
Windward Passages and Suite for Piano and Violin which he is currently
arranging for symphony orchestra. He has participated on several National
Public Radio documentaries including W.E.B. DuBois: A Biography in Four
Voices, for which he composed the score. He is the recipient of numerous
grants and fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, Meet the
Composer, and, among others, the Pew Fellowship in Jazz Composition. The
New Yorker exclaimed "Burrell personifies the best of neoclassicism,
uncompromising individuality and in-the-moment gusto." His new CD,
Expansion, featuring William Parker and Andrew Cyrille will be released
Summer 2004.
This program is made possible in part through the generous sponsorship or support of ars nova and Richard Groman
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