Sunday, October 27, 2019, 7pm Hertz Hall

— MYRA MELFORD JAZZ PLATFORM — David Virelles Trio featuring Marcus Gilmore and Rashaan Carter Spider Web by Nicole Mitchell and Josh Kun

David Virelles Trio David Virelles, piano Rashaan Carter, bass Marcus Gilmore, drums

INTERMISSION

Spider Web by Nicole Mitchell and Josh Kun

Nicole Mitchell, flute, vocals, electronics, composition, text Josh Kun, spoken word, text Jovia Armstrong, percussion Damon Locks, vocals, spoken word, electronics Joshua White, keyboards S. Ama Wrey, movement, spoken word e Bus You’re Not One of Us Blue Pacific Land of Dreams Climate Crisis Key to the Rise Somebody Else’s World White Roses Ghosts e Spider

Cal Performances’ 2019 –20 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo.

 PLAYBILL ABOUT THE ARTISTS

is season, Cal Performances has invited pia - woodwind player Henry readgill (himself an nist, composer, and UC Berkeley faculty member early and renowned member of the AACM) as Myra Melford to co-curate our jazz pro gram - a member of readgill’s ensemble Double Up ming, with concerts that will introduce local jazz and other recent projects. Virelles is extending aficionados to artists who are household names the lineage of such ground-breaking pianists as in New York and abroad, but may be less well- Don Pullen (who performed and recorded with known here in the Bay Area. Charles Mingus) and Andrew Hill. Tonight’s trio is the perfect way to experience his rhyth - elcome to the first of two concerts mically propulsive, thoughtful, and thought- bringing leading-edge jazz and im - provoking music. Wprovisational artists to Cal Per for - ese are artists steeped in the jazz tradition, mances. Tonight’s program features two artists who are extending it through new hybrid forms who are extending the innovations in jazz and highly personal approaches, insuring the ushered in by musicians who questioned both continuing evolution of this inclusive and di - musical and social conventions in their work— verse art form into the 21st century. Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis, —Myra Melford and John Coltrane, along with the members of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement Santiago de Cuba-born pi - of Creative Musicians (AACM), since the early- anist David Virelles grew to mid-1960s. As noted musician and scholar up in a musical home, his George E. Lewis says in the preface to his book father a Nueva trova singer- A Power Greater an Itself (2007, University of songwriter and his mother Chicago Press), “AACM musicians developed a music teacher and a flutist new and influential ideas about timbre, sound, in the Santiago symphony. collectivity, extended technique and instru - ough classically trained mentation, … intermedia, (and) the relation - at the conservatory, he was also surrounded by ship of improvisation to composition.” many types of music in culturally rich Santiago Nicole Mitchell, a third-generation member while growing up. Eventually, Virelles also dis - of the AACM (who formerly served as its first covered Bud Powell, elonious Monk, An - woman president), makes colorful and imagi - drew Hill, and Don Pul len, and he would soon native music for many different types of en - become fascinated by the seeming connections sembles. She has enormous range both as a between this musical tradition and those from flutist of extraordinary expressive capability, his birthplace. and as a composer and bandleader. In her Aer studying in Toronto (at the invitation multi media piece Spider Web , she joins forces of Canadian musician Jane Bunnett), Virelles with writer and scholar Josh Kun and a unique relocated to New York City in 2009 to study ensemble of spoken word and movement artists composition with Pulitzer Prize winner Henry and musicians, to create a platform for the col - readgill. Since then, he has established him - laborative exploration of race and politics in self as one of the most sought-aer pianists of Southern California in the context of Afro - his generation. He has performed and recorded futurism, black experimental music, and her with musicians as distinct as readgill, Mark own family history. Turner, Paul Motian, Andrew Cyrille, Chris David Virelles, pianist, composer, and band - Pot ter, Bill Frisell, Steve Coleman, Wadada Leo leader, has been blurring the lines between Smith, Tom Harrell, Hermeto Pascoal, Milford composition and improvisation, and between Graves, Ravi Coltrane, Marcus Gilmore, and jazz and other styles of music (Cuban music, Román Díaz. contemporary classical music) since he moved Virelles is a Shiing Foundation Fellow, and to New York City in 2009. He has a longstand - a recipient of the Ontario Arts Foundation’s ing working relationship with composer and Louis Applebaum Award, a Cristobal Díaz

 ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Ayala Travel Grant, and a commission from the others. He has also studied with one of his Jazz Gallery. He was named a top Rising Star prime influences, Ron Carter. (piano category) by DownBeat in 2017, and Rashaan Carter regularly performs with a Artist of the Year by Musica Jazz magazine host of artists in and outside of New York and (Italy). While a student at Humber College can be heard on numerous recordings. in Toronto, he won the Oscar Peterson Prize, presented by Peterson himself. Virelles has also Marcus Gilmore (drums ), been mentored by jazz piano legend Barry born in 1986, was first in - Harris. spired by the music of his Virelles’ 2012 album, Continuum, ended up grandfather, legendary jazz on many “Best Of e Year” lists, including that drummer Roy Haynes, who of the New York Times . Since then, he has re - gave Marcus his first set of leased three albums on the Munich ECM label drums at age 10. He has to critical acclaim, documenting a wide artistic per formed internationally range— Mbóko , Antenna , and Gnosis . His latest with some of today’s best-known contemporary release, Igbó Alákọrin (e Singer’s Grove), Vol. I artists, including Chick Corea, Gonzalo Rubal - & II —a joint effort between his El Tivoli Music caba, Natalie Cole, Clark Terry, Nicholas Payton, label and New York’s Pi Recordings—is a cele - John Patitucci, Cassan dra Wil son, Steve Cole - bration of the musical history of Santiago de man, Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Cuba. e recording, which has garnered wide Jazz Orchestra, Ravi Col trane, Terence Blan - critical acclaim, features Santiago music legends chard, Vijay Iyer, Roy Har grove, and Raul Mid- and was recorded at the Siboney E.G.R.E.M. stu - on and. Gilmore has been featured repeatedly in dios in this southeastern Cuban town. publications such as the New York Times , Down Beat , and Modern Drummer. Rashaan Carter (bass ) grew up in the Wash ington Spider Web (DC) area where, through by Nicole Mitchell and Joshua Kun the nurturing of his father, In this collaborative piece commissioned by a saxophonist, and his Clock shop, composer/flutist Nicole Mitchell mother, a jazz radio pro - and scholar Josh Kun explore visionary/reflec - grammer, he forged an in - tive glitches between 1970s and pre-apocalyptic terest in music. Aer stints Southern California in an exploration of race with various instruments, he chose the bass as and the politics of human life. Spider Web is the voice for his musical expression. Carter fictionally based on Mitchell’s own history of worked and gained experience on the local moving to Anaheim as a young girl, and her Washington scene and aer high school moved experiences with racism in the bright glare of to New York City to attend the New School suburban California sunshine. With glimpses University. ere, he studied with Buster into a future climate meltdown through her Williams and Reggie Workman. While attend - mother’s communication with the spirit world, ing the New School he also began to work with the piece uses music and text to explore many of the faculty members, including Joe Mitchell’s family history within the context of Chambers and Jimmy Owens. Southern California’s ongoing history of Black Since moving to New York, Carter has be - musical radicalism and experimental musical come entrenched in the jazz scene, working thinking. is piece is born of Mitchell and with Benny Golson, Curtis Fuller and Louis Kun’s mutual interests in music as a language Hayes, Wallace Roney, David Murray, Henry of social reckoning and social action, and readgill, Ravi Coltrane, Geri Allen, Marc music as a way of coming to grips with the lim - Cary, Cindy Blackman, Doug and Jean Carn, its and possibilities of place. Antoine Roney, Sonny Simmons, and many

 PLAYBILL ABOUT THE ARTISTS

(left to right) Joshua Kun, Jovia Armstrong, Nicole Mitchell, S. Ama Wray, Damon Locks, Joshua White

Nicole Mitchell is an award-winning flutist, has been repeatedly named “Top Flutist of the composer, conceptualist, bandleader, and edu - Year” by the Down beat Magazine Critics Poll cator. Having emerged from Chicago’s innova - and the Jazz Journ alists Association (2010 –19). tive music scene in the 1990s, her artistic work Her project Mandorla Awakening (FPE Re - celebrates contemporary Afri can-American cords), was cited the top jazz album of 2017 in cul ture and is centered in the belief that art has the New York Times . Black Earth Ensemble cel - the power to be transformative. A Doris Duke ebrated its 20th anniversary in 2018. Mitchell is Artist and recipient of the Herb Alpert Award, the William S. Diet rich II Chair of Jazz Studies Mitchell is renowned as the founder of the and a professor of music at University of Pitts - Chicago-based Black Earth Ensemble , and the burgh. She is endorsed by Powell Flutes. former first woman president of the Association for the Advance ment of Creative Musicians Josh Kun is director of the Annenberg School (AACM). Her primary inspiration was her of Com munication at the Univer sity of South - mother, Joan Beard Mitchell, a self-taught Afro - ern California, where he is the chair in cross- futurist writer and visual artist and an early cultural communication and a professor of member of the Black Folk Art Gallery of Syra - communication, journalism, and American cuse. Mitchell celebrates endless possibilities studies and ethnicity. A cultural historian, cu - by “creating visionary worlds through music rator, journalist, and MacArthur Fellow, he that bridge the familiar with the unknown.” As writes and researches about music and the pol - a composer, she has been commissioned by the itics of cultural connection. Kun is the winner French Ministry of Culture, French Amer i can of an American Book Award (2005) and a Jazz Ex change, Chicago Muse um of Con temp - Berlin Prize (2018). He is an author and editor o rary Art, Newport Jazz Festi val, Art Institute of of several books, anthologies, and artist mono - Chicago, Chicago Jazz Festival, Interna tional graphs, and as a curator of music and public Con temporary Ensemble (ICE), Chicago Sin - humanities projects, he has worked with fonietta, and by Chamber Music Amer ica. She SF MOMA, the California African American

 ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Mu seum, the Grammy Museum, the Getty Joshua White had parallel musical training in Foun dation, and the Los Angeles Public Li- both classical and gospel music traditions be - brary. He co-edits the book series Refiguring fore encountering the music most commonly American Music for Duke University Press. referred to as “jazz.” For the past several years, he has been in demand as one of Southern Cali - Jovia Armstrong , a percussionist and educa - fornia’s most creative and technically accom - tor, is a well-traveled musician and a regional plished pianists. White is, in short, a cultural Sabian and Gon Bops artist. She is also an artist improviser, taking his inheritance and ventur - ambassador for Sedo Audio. Detroit-bred, she ing into possibility. Herbie Hancock told music was named the 2014 Black Female Percus sionist critic George Varga of the San Diego Union- of the Year at the Black Women in Jazz Awards. Tribune , “I was impressed by his daring and Armstrong is a member of the Chicago soul/ courageous approach to improvisation on the punk group JC Brooks Band and a member of cutting edge of innovation. He is his own man. and composer for the group Musique Noir. I believe that elonious Monk would have been proud of the performance of this great Damon Locks is a talented musician, visual young artist.” artist, and teacher, who, over the past 30 years, has used these various avenues as a way to un - S. Ama Wray is an associate professor of dance leash his politically driven, urban-influenced art at UC Irvine. She is a former UK NESTA Fellow upon the world. Locks’ artwork oen revolves (National Endowment for Science Technology around people and their landscapes; the narra - and the Arts, similar to the MacArthur tive themes of protest, unrest, and tension are Awards)—an improviser, choreographer, direc - woven throughout. As a musician, he has been tor, teacher, and scholar. Wray self-titles as a operating on the Chicago music scene since the “Performance Architect,” having received her late 1980s. Today, he splits his time between his PhD from the University of Surrey, where she work as a visual artist and illustrator, a deejay, developed her theory and practice of embodi - and a member of both e Eternals and the jazz ology, a neo-African approach to contemporary ensemble Exploding Star Orches tra. Locks’ love dance improvisation. In 2015, the UK’s National for both visual art and music inform and com - Resource Centre for Dance invited her to place plement each other and help form an overall her archive within its permanent collection. In aesthetic, with ideas and tonalities bouncing the realm of theater, Wray has successfully di - back and forth between genres. He is the recip - rected two of Mojisola Adebayo’s plays— Moj of ient of a 2015 Meier Founda tion for the Arts the Antarctic: An African Odyssey and Mu ham - Achievement Award, recognizing mid-career mad Ali and Me —which have toured the UK artists for their innovation, past achievements, and South Africa supported by the British and community contributions. Council.

 PLAYBILL