An Evening with Savion Glover & Jack Dejohnette
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Co-present AN EVENING WITH SAVION GLOVER & JACK DEJOHNETTE Savion Glover Tap Dancer Jack DeJohnette Drums Featuring George Colligan Piano Jerome Harris Bass Marshall Davis, Jr. Tap Dancer Monday, June 20 & Tuesday, June 21 at 8:00pm Page Auditorium Performance: 90 minutes, including intermission and pause Savion Glover with Marshall Davis, Jr. INTERMISSION Jack DeJohnette and his Trio PAUSE Savion Glover with Jack DeJohnette and full company SAVION GLOVER Savion Glover is a Tony Award-winning choreographer and legendary hoofer whose career has spanned four decades. He began his Broadway stage career as The Tap Dance Kid, and continued with Black and Blue, Jelly's Last Jam, and his unprecedented award-winning Bring in da Noise Bring in da Funk, which garnered him a Tony Award for Best Choreography. He choreographed the multiple Tony Award nominee and Broadway sensation Shuffle Along with his longtime collaborator George C. Wolfe. In addition to his extensive Broadway career as a performer and choreographer, Savion has created many tap shows that tour worldwide including Bare Soundz, Classical Savion, OM, StepZ, Solo in Time, Sole Sanctuary, Improvography, Footnotes, and Savion Glover's Holiday Spectacular. In addition to creating his ongoing body of work, Savion has enjoyed performing worldwide with jazz legends including McCoy Tyner, Roy Haynes, and Jack DeJohnette. Mr. Glover's film credits include Tap, starring Gregory Hines and Sammy Davis, Jr.; Spike Lee's Bamboozled, and George Miller's Happy Feet and Happy Feet Two. He has appeared on television in commercials for Nike and is a longstanding performer on Sesame Street. As a child, Glover was privileged to dance with and be guided by the great Bunny Briggs, Buster Brown, Lon Chaney, Gregory Hines, Sammy Davis, Jr., Jimmy Slyde and Diane Walker. He currently serves as the 2016 Ambassador of Dance at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, as well as serving on the Center’s Board of Directors. JACK DEJOHNETTE In a career that spans five decades and includes collaborations with some of the most iconic figures in modern jazz, NEA Jazz Master and Grammy winner Jack DeJohnette has established an unchallenged reputation as one of the greatest drummers in the history of the genre. The list of creative associations throughout his career is lengthy and diverse: John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Stan Getz, Keith Jarrett, Chet Baker, George Benson, Stanley Turrentine, Herbie Hancock, Dave Holland, Joe Henderson, Freddy Hubbard, and Betty Carter. Along the way, he has developed a versatility that allows room for hard bop, R&B, world music, avant-garde, and just about every other style to emerge in the past half-century. Born in Chicago in 1942, DeJohnette grew up in a family where music and music appreciation was a high priority. Beginning at age four, he studied classical piano privately; he later studied at the Chicago Conservatory of Music. He added the drums to his repertoire when he joined his high school concert band at age fourteen. By the mid-1960s, DeJohnette had entered the Chicago jazz scene—not just as a leader of his own fledgling groups but also as a sideman on both piano and drums. He experimented with rhythm, melody, and harmony as part of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians during the group’s early days and later drummed alongside Rashied Ali in the John Coltrane Quintet. He garnered international recognition during his tenure with the Charles Lloyd Quartet, one of the first jazz groups to receive crossover attention. In 1968, DeJohnette joined Miles Davis’ group just prior to the recording of Bitches Brew, an album that triggered a seismic shift in jazz and permanently changed the direction of the music. Miles later wrote in his autobiography, “Jack DeJohnette gave me a deep groove that I just loved to play over.” DeJohnette stayed with Davis for three years, making important contributions to prominent Davis recordings like Live-Evil and A Tribute to Jack Johnson (both in 1971) and On the Corner (1972). During this same period, DeJohnette also recorded his first albums as a leader, beginning with The DeJohnette Complex in 1968 on Milestone. He followed up with Have You Heard in 1970, then switched to Prestige, where he released Sorcery in 1974 and Cosmic Chicken in 1975. The mid 1970s were marked by a series of short-lived groups and projects– many of them leaning toward the experimental side of jazz, including The Gateway Trio (featuring Dave Holland and John Abercrombie), Directions (with Abercrombie and saxophonist Alex Foster), and New Directions (Abercrombie, with Eddie Gomez on bass). Special Edition—which helped launch the careers of little known musicians like David Murray, Arthur Blythe, Chico Freeman, John Purcell, and Rufus Reid—remained active into the 1990s, although the project was frequently interrupted by DeJohnette’s various other collaborative ventures, especially recordings and tours with Keith Jarrett. DeJohnette has worked extensively with Jarrett as part of a longstanding trio with Gary Peacock. The threesome celebrated their thirtieth anniversary in 2013. GEORGE COLLIGAN, PIANO George Colligan is a New York-based pianist, organist, drummer, trumpeter, teacher, and bandleader. An award-winning composer (Chamber Music America/Doris Duke Foundation grant recipient) and player (winner, Jazzconnect.com Jazz Competition), Colligan is highly in demand as a sideman, having worked with players like Cassandra Wilson, Don Byron, Buster Williams, and Lonnie Plaxico, both on the bandstand and in recording sessions (appearing on over a hundred recordings). Colligan has released twenty-four recordings of his own; his latest CD on the Origin Label is called The Endless Mysteries and features Larry Grenadier and Jack DeJohnette. Colligan’s musical style incorporates everything from showtunes to funk, from free improvisation to twentieth century classical music. Colligan was on the faculty of The Juilliard School for two years and is currently an Assistant Professor at Portland State University and a member of Jack DeJohnette’s New Quintet. Recently, Colligan started playing the Hammond 44 Melodion. He has a blog at jazztruth.blogspot.com. George Colligan has toured, recorded, and/or performed as a sideman with Gary Bartz, Benny Golson, Gary Thomas, Miguel Zenon, Tom Harrell, Steve Coleman, Eddie Henderson, Ralph Peterson, Vanessa Rubin, Steve Wilson, Dave Weckl, Richard Bona, Jane Monheit, Ravi Coltrane, Lenny White, Michael Brecker, Mike Clark, Nicholas Payton, Sheila Jordan, Janis Siegel, Christian McBride, Billy Hart, Charles Fambrough, Mingus Big Band, Al Foster, Mark Turner, Don Braden, Lew Soloff, Gunther Schuller, Carl Allen, Rodney Whitaker, Lee Konitz, Jamie Baum, Michal Urbaniak, Ron McClure, DJ Logic, Randy Brecker, and Stefon Harris. JEROME HARRIS, BASS Guitarist and bass guitarist Jerome Harris launched his career playing with Sonny Rollins in 1978; later he was Rollins' guitarist for seven years, appearing on five of his recordings and touring with him several times to Japan. Harris has also recorded and performed live on six continents with such jazz notables as Jack DeJohnette, Bill Frisell, Ray Anderson, Don Byron, Bobby Previte, Oliver Lake, Amina Claudine Myers, Bob Stewart, George Russell, Julius Hemphill, and Bob Moses. Harris has appeared on more than fifty recordings. His most recent CD as a leader is Rendezvous—the first-ever jazz release by the audio connoisseur magazine Stereophile. On Hidden in Plain View (New World), his acoustic bass guitar underpins an all-star group reinterpreting compositions by jazz trailblazer Eric Dolphy. In Passing (Muse) showcases the first of Harris’ groups to utilize a reeds- trombone-vibes-bass-drums lineup. His debut as a leader was Algorithms (Minor Music), featuring saxophonist Marty Ehrlich. His recordings as a featured sideman are Don Byron's A Fine Line: Arias and Lieder (Blue Note), Marty Erlich’s Malinke's Dance (Omnitone), Jack DeJohnette's Oneness (ECM), the Ray Anderson Lapis Lazuli Band's Funkorific (Enja), and Ned Rothenberg & Sync's Inner Diaspora (Tzadik), Harbinger (Animul), and Port of Entry (Intuition). Harris organized a symposium at the New England Conservatory on legendary composer and bandleader George Russell, published an essay in the anthology The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective, and has taught university courses on the history and social context of jazz and blues. Born and raised in New York, Harris began his musical studies with accordion and violin and is self-taught on guitar and bass guitar. After earning a B.A. in psychology and social relations at Harvard College, Harris graduated with honors from New England Conservatory of Music as a scholarship student on jazz guitar. MARSHALL DAVIS, JR., TAP DANCER Marshall L. Davis, Jr. began tap dancing at the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center in Miami, FL. He was the Florida winner for Tri-Star Pictures’ Tap Day challenge, a promotion for the movie Tap, starring Gregory Hines and Sammy Davis, Jr. At age thirteen, he accepted a check from Ed McMahon for winning the coveted title of 1991 Star Search Teen Dance Champion. He performed in the Tony Award-winning Broadway production of Bring in Da' Noise Bring in Da' Funk choreographed by Savion Glover and directed by George C. Wolfe. Prior to Noise/Funk, Davis had the pleasure of performing with Harold “Stumpy” Cromer and Kristin Chenoweth at the Guthrie Theater in the musical Babes in Arms directed by Garland Wright. Named "Most Unusual Dance Soloist" by The Miami Herald for his rendition of The Morton Gould Tap Concerto, Mr. Davis is also the recipient of Isaac Hayes’ Breaking the Barrier Award for his achievements at such an early age. The adjunct professor at Queens College can be seen through motion capture performance in the animated movie Happy Feet Two, directed by George Miller. Davis' dancing is most heavily influenced by his mentor, the late Steve Condos of the Condos Brothers.