Songs of Freedom

DA CAMERA chamber music & jazz Sarah Rothenberg, Pre-concert conversation with artistic and general director Ulysses Owens, Jr. 7:15 PM Cullen Performance Hall, University of Houston Friday, December 1, 2017; 8:00 PM Songs of Freedom Ulysses Owens, Jr., Music Director Featuring René Marie, Theo Bleckmann and Alicia Olatuja Ulysses Owens, Jr., drums and music director; René Marie, Alicia Olatuja and Theo Bleckmann, vocals; Allyn Johnson, piano/Fender Rhodes; David Rosenthal, guitar; Reuben Rogers, bass This program is sponsored by Nina and Michael Zilkha. 28 Over the past three decades, Jazz at Nate Chinen wrote in The New York I thought we gotta have a flower child; Lincoln Center has presented dozens Times, “Olatuja brings an earnest in- Joni Mitchell.” if not hundreds of carefully curated tensity to the song, bringing it into Assuming the set list follows the special programs celebrating legend- implicit dialogue with A Change Is outline of previous performances, the ary figures from the history of jazz. Gonna Come, the indelible Sam Cooke program opens with an instrumental, The problem for most of us, however, tune. ‘No one and nothing stays un- and then the singers will take turns is that while these programs are inter- changed,’ she sings, and as she slowly before coming together on Baltimore, esting to read about, you have to go builds a crescendo, she hints at both a haunting Randy Newman song im- to New York to actually see and hear a formidable obstacle and the will to mortalized by Simone on a 1970s al- them. overcome.” bum of the same name produced by Songs of Freedom: A Tribute to Marie, who inherits the role origi- Creed Taylor for the CTI/Kudu label. Abbey Lincoln, Joni Mitchell and Nina nated by Dee Dee Bridgewater at the Interestingly, at the time of its release Simone, which originated at Lincoln Jazz at Lincoln Center premiere and Simone essentially disavowed the al- Center last year, is among the rare subsequently filled by Joanna Majoko bum as Taylor’s conception, not hers. exceptions. The Houston Da Camera at New York’s Winter Jazz Fest in Jan- It received mixed reviews and did not Jazz performance is the first stop on uary of this year, will be featured on sell particularly well. It is now consid- a national tour carrying over into the Simone’s epic Four Women and Lin- ered one of her classic works; three spring of 2018. The touring group coln’s Freedom Day, from Max Roach’s of the Simone selections in Songs of includes drummer Ulysses Owens, classic 1960 LP We Insist: Freedom Freedom come from the Baltimore al- who directed the first performance Now Suite. The lyrics pointedly echo bum. at Lincoln Center in the fall of 2016, the promise and betrayal that Afri- Marie recalls the impact the al- with vocalists Theo Bleckmann, Ali- can Americans have been living with bum had on her when she first heard cia Olatuja and René Marie. They are since the end of the Civil War: “Whis- it. “I was a rebellious teenager in the backed by Owens’ group consisting of per, listen. Whisper, listen. Whisper, 1970s, singing with an R&B band. My pianist Allyn Johnson, bassist Reuben say we are free/Rumors flyin’, must be mother brought a Nina Simone album Rodgers (who previously performed lyin’, can it really be?/ Can’t conceive home. If Mom recommended it, I was in the Da Camera Jazz Series with it, can’t believe it, but that’s what they not going to listen to it. It sat on the Charles Lloyd’s New Quartet) and gui- say/Slave no longer, slave no longer, coffee table. It was the one where she tarist David Rosenthal. this is Freedom Day…” has a white turban on her head. Although the final program was Songs of Freedom began as the “When I finally put it on, I still coming together at the time of second night of a weekend celebra- thought ‘Oh my God!’ I learned for the publication, each singer will be fea- tion at Lincoln Center called Songs first time, you can put your anger and tured on three songs apiece writ- We Love, starring Bridgewater. The emotion into your songs. That was the ten by Lincoln, Mitchell or Simone. first night focused on songs from the beginning of my love for Nina Sim- Bleckmann, who worked with Owens 1920s through the Fifties. The second one. Once I sank my hooks in, I start- in Kurt Elling’s band, has previously night picked up the torch in the 1960s. ed writing my own songs, demanding handled Simone’s Balm in Gilead and “They came to me the year before the strength that she did in the face of Mitchell’s Borderline, written in 1994 and said they wanted a program focus- injustice.” but uncannily relevant to the current ing on the 1960s to today,” says Ow- Still, it was another three decades political climate: “You snipe so steady/ ens, an in-demand drummer (he most – she has an interesting life story that You snub so snide/So ripe and ready/ recently performed in Houston with perhaps can be told in another Da to diminish and deride/You’re so quick the gifted teenaged pianist Joey Al- Camera program note -- before Ma- to condescend/My opinionated friend/ exander) who has worked frequently rie launched her professional singing All you deface, all you defend/is just a with Jazz at Lincoln Center under the career. In recent years, she has been borderline…” direction of Wynton Marsalis. “I said, making up for lost time. This spring, Olatuja, an opera-trained singer ‘I’m only 33 years old. I don’t know she was voted best female vocalist by who performed as a featured soloist that I can speak to 50 years of songs…’ the Jazz Journalists Association. with the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir at “The 1960s was so important to Olatuja graduated from Manhat- President Barack Obama’s second in- music. Everything we’re doing now tan School of Music with a master’s auguration, is out front on Mitchell’s – rock and roll, singer-songwriters degree in classical voice. She could Both Sides Now and Simone’s Every- – emerged in form in that decade…. have had a career as an opera singer thing Must Change, originally record- I knew I wanted to work with Nina or in musical theater, but jazz has be- ed by Randy Crawford and covered by Simone and Abbey Lincoln. I had come her primary focus. Her next al- Simone on her album Baltimore. As them in mind from the start. And then bum will include a version of Mitch- 29 ell’s Both Sides Now, written when she try has suffered a setback.” was 19 years old. In an attempt to fortify herself for “One of the things I love about Joni the struggle, Marie recalls the words Mitchell is that the way she writes, at of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who least one of her songs at some point was in turn quoting a 19th-century will be the soundtrack of your life. Her abolitionist minister: “The arc of the songs are timeless. She writes about moral universe is long, but it bends to- the basic human experiences of love. ward justice.” She says, “I believe that.” For me, I can relate to a lot of her ex- Owens obviously can relate to periences. The more you live life, the these sentiments, but he promises more you realize how little you know.” that he will not be making any politi- Mitchell began her career in the cal diatribes from the stage. 1960s as an acoustic folk singer. In “The music says everything. Let’s the 1970s, she gravitated toward jazz, sing and play and let the music speak. recording with Tom Scott, Jaco Pas- This music is about justice, and free- torius, Pat Metheny, Wayne Shorter dom of mind, and sexuality; that we and Herbie Hancock, and collaborat- can all come together and coexist. Joni ing with Charles Mingus on his final sang about the freedom of love, Nina album. In 2008, Hancock’s River: The had the sound of freedom in her voice, Joni Letters, featuring guest vocalists and Abbey wrote about it. I’m very and a cameo by Mitchell herself, won honored to be performing their music a Grammy Award for Album of the in this show.” Year, the first time a jazz album had Rick Mitchell won the award in more than 40 years. The widespread resistance to the presidency of Donald Trump, as well as street protest movements such as Black Lives Matter, have drawn com- parisons to the anti-war and Black Pride movements of the 1960s and the reactions they engendered among older white Americans. Olatuja says she feels hopeful that the current divi- sions in our society will lead to posi- tive transformations once the major- ity of Americans comes to terms with the underlying truth that has been revealed. “It’s like surgery,” she says. “You just have to cut it all open to see it for what it is and get it all out. It’s pain- ful, and dangerous, and messy. But it’s necessary. It can not stay the same.” Marie, who is old enough to re- member the Sixties, says this time around feels different to her. “I have never felt so hopeless and helpless, if you want to know the truth. I am sat- urated with despair. As a musician, I am in the bubble.

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